Want to misdirect your readers from a big plot twist, but still lay it out in plain sight? I have the tool for you: red herrings.Ā
First of all, what is a red herring?Ā
a fact, idea, or subject that takes peopleās attention away from the central point being considered:
[For example:] the police investigated many clues, but they were all red herrings.
- Definition by the Cambridge Dictionary
Itās a type of foreshadowing, though itās false clues
It can be used in any genre
What can a red herring be?
A character who seems evil or suspicious.
An object that seems important.
An event that seems to be significant to the story or protagonist.
A clue placed by the antagonist or a secondary character that sends investigators down the wrong path.
Those are the main ones, but you could have other ideas
Make sure that theyāre important, logical and inform the plot
Lie, but not completely. For example: letās say someone has been murdered. The victim was found with two glasses of wine in the room, one of them having traces of red lipstick, which implies the killer is a woman. However, it turns out that the suspect shared a glass of wine with the victim earlier that day.
you donāt want your reader to finish the book and throw it across the room, just after lighting it on fire
misleading is fine, but if you leave out information completely, then no one could figure it out and you lost your readerās trust
Make your reader remember it
It usually takes three times of information being said for the reader to remember it
If you only say it once and never mention it again, itās basically useless
Put the real clues, just donāt insist a lot on them until you reveal it all in the end and show the reader all the real clues that you previously mentioned
When you plant the real clues, force your readerās attention elsewhere
itās giving them extra (sometimes useless) information to the reader
you can distract them with action
with high emotions (it can be almost any emotion, just intensely)
with hiding it in a list of things
What you should be careful not to do:
Be careful not to be dishonest. Just donāt.
Donāt have all the evidence point to a completely opposite direction or have the twist be something like āoh, the murderer was the guy we didnāt see for half the bookā
A bit like being dishonest, donāt show your red herring as being the absolute truth
Donāt add them because the plot lacks tension, excitement, or conflict. They need to be relevant to the plot, perhaps even to the point that if you took it out, the plot would collapse
If the red herring is a character:
Donāt give any (obvious) reasons for your reader to suspect the guilty character to be the culprit
The innocent character needs to legitimately seem possibly guilty
maybe they benefit from the crime
maybe they had the means or opportunity to commit the crime
maybe they have a strong motive
This is optional for your story, so you can skip this section
A double herring is a clue that is introduced early in the story, which seems to be too convenient, and then a second clue comes in and conflicts with the first one. The character following the clues will believe the second one, until itās almost too late and realize the first clue was the right one all along.Ā
Stories with good red herrings:
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, in which the narratorās secret is mind-blowing, but itās all there and foreshadowed in the book
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling, in which all the clues are there to find the culprit, but the red herring misleads the reader
And There Were None by Agatha Christie, where the red herring misleads and the culprit is, for a while, not a suspected
!!SPOILER ALERT!! Explaining one red herring
InĀ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, we, the readers, and the characters are led to think that the villain is Sirius Black
We are given many clues that Sirius Black wants to kill Harry and is on Voldemortās side, just like when he was in prison and was heard whisperingĀ āheās at Hogwarts,ā so he is not explicitely saying he wants to kill Harry, or even that heās talking about him, but we think he is implying it.
We do get clues about Scabbers (Ronās rat) being the villain and actually Peter Pettigrew, who is supposed to be dead, just like how they could only find Peterās finger and Scabbers has a missing paw.Ā
Thereās many other clues and misdirections, but I wonāt go through all of them because Iāll be here all day if I do
I hope this helped, and feel free to add more:)
blakekathryn
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
origamiaround
romaincrisis
2087
