Introduction

Red herrings are just for Mystery Novels, right? They are one of the key tools used by the mystery novelists and what those readers watch for, but red herrings aren’t exclusive to one genre.

In A Game of Thrones series, we’re misdirected that Ned Stark is the protagonist of the story. Or in The Matrix, the prophecy is revealed to have been manipulated all along. These create powerful moments that lock the reader in for the rest of the story as their expectations are sent reeling and they try to re-orient themselves to the true story.

The reason we’re talking about red herrings today is that it’s such a powerful tool that is often misused. In science fiction and fantasy, where readers already track magic systems, alien species, and world-building, poorly executed misdirection can cause reader fatigue and frustration rather than delight. Done well, red herrings create better re-reading experiences and rewarding “I should have seen that coming!” moments.

This post will cover what makes a red herring effective versus manipulative, how to plant them naturally in SF/F narratives, techniques for balancing misdirection with fair play, and how to use genre-specific elements to enhance your red herrings.

What Red Herrings Actually Are (And Aren’t)

A red herring in literature is a piece of information, character, or a plotline that appears and diverts attention from the true answer or direction of the story. It’s not a lie, but a presentation of information that is incomplete or that leads to false conclusions. This doesn’t mean the information needed for the truth isn’t there. Most of the time the truth in the red herring is in the small details that can misdirect via interpretation.

Okay, but you’ve felt cheated by red herrings before. What keeps a red herring from feeling like a cheap trick?

A red herring works with the information the reader has.

Red Herring

Your character is lost on an abandoned space station. The walls are shredded, blood streaks the corridors, and the silence feels like aftermath. Everything suggests an attack.

But there are no bodies, the escape pods are gone, and the damage patterns don’t cluster, they scatter.

Your character finds an emergency broadcast warning of an incoming meteorite storm. What looked like claw marks are actually impact scoring from hull fragments. The “slaughter” was a desperate evacuation during a meteor strike.

That gives you just enough description and evidence that an attack could have happened, but the new information makes it believable. Let’s look at a cheap trick version of this.

Cheap Trick

Your character moves through the abandoned space station. The walls are gauged with deep claw marks, long and arching. Blood has splattered on the floor, up the walls, and up onto the ceiling. Some large red stains show where someone must have died. Though, no bodies remain.

The silence feels wrong, like the aftermath of a hunt.

Your character reaches the terminal, and as soon as it powers on an emergency broadcast plays.

There was no attack.

A meteor storm tore through the station. The claw marks were just impact scoring and debris strickes. The blood came from the injuring during ht chaos.

A rescue team evacuated the crew in time, but just missed your character.

The latter example breaks your reader’s trust. You set this up as an alien species/space monster attack only to have it turn out to be a meteor storm. So focus on the words you use to describe your red herrings. They can greatly impact how your readers react, and they can help you build continuous trust even when you make your grand reveal.

Red herrings are for more than just surprise. They offer the author a tool that can increase tension, create subplots for world-building, develop character relationships, and make more satisfying reveals of truth. You can see this in stories like A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.

The red herring is the political conflicts, for example between the Starks and Lannisters, but the main story issue is the White Walkers who are hinted at in the prologue. The political conflicts provide tension through court intrigue, world-building through the difference in regional reactions to the threat, and payoff as the true threat gradually re-frames everything that comes before.

In this an many other stories, you’ll see that the red herring deepens the reading experience. Readers come away more satisfied as it can help the story feel more fleshed out. But a red herring’s success comes down to the planting of the clues, as shown in our example above.

Planting Red Herrings: The Art of Strategic Distraction

The best red herrings come from the natural grooves of your story. While you may be focusing on planting red herrings, you’ll want to review your story conflicts and world-building so you can find what you can use. Maybe in scene three you dropped a world-building note about a key figure in your story. It could be someone who appears shady, sitting in the shadowed corners of the tavern and doesn’t talk to anyone. People believe their a spy from the Dark Lord who goes where the Dark Lord can’t to spy on those who’s worried. It’s not until the protagonist talks to this shady character do they learn that they’re actually here to help. But really, they’re shady because they’ve been on the run from the Dark Lord and the interactions with others are fraught with paranoia. Then tie this reveal to the reveal of the true spy who has been undercutting your protagonists goals. This can also lead to the multiple suspects or solutions red herrings.

Layering multiple suspects or solutions can create more satisfying red herrings and endings to your story. The best approach is to have your extremes to blind your reader to the ideal solution. Working in the murder mystery realm you will have your character that everyone easily blames because they’re greasy, sly, always in the shadows. Then contrast with a character that seems nothing but innocent. This character is baby-faced, always dressed in white, the lighting is always perfect on them, and anything else you want to associate with innocence. Then throw in your character that falls halfway along that scale. They have the means, motive, and opportunity to be the true perpetrator. Now, you can choose any of those as your perpetrator, but consider how satisfying each character would be in the story. This layering works well beyond murder mystery, Fantasy/Sci-Fi stories can use this approach through mysteries and their resolutions.

Brandon Sanderson does a great job of this in Mistborn: The Final Empire. Beginning with the Lord Ruler, Sanderson creates multiple theories about who the Lord Ruler is. He uses Skaa folklore, written histories, and character interactions or viewings of the Lord Ruler to build the tone and myth behind this “Dark Lord” character. I like to think of this approach as the Dwayne Johnson version of Hercules. You have the stories that are told, then when the viewer/reader experiences the reality, it completely changes how you’ve thought of everything. Each red herring carries a partial truth, which is what makes them believable. You’re not trying to trick your reader, only give them the pieces so they invest in a truth they want to follow. Each layer, whether that’s folklore, history, or character experience, will keep your readers guessing and engaged as they debate which red herring or partial truth to follow.

Conclusion

The red herring is a literary device that can allow you to create more reader engagement and a sense of fuller story throughout your works. So long as you respect the careful balance required of believability, fair enough to satisfy, and of keeping them well integrated in the story, you can use this device for more powerful writing. They can also help with the re-readability factor as the revelation sends readers back to the early pages to see where they went wrong in their understand. Remember, this isn’t about tricking the reader, but providing possible outcomes until the true one is revealed. Overall, using red herrings can be satisfied for you and your readers.

Now it’s time to look at your manuscript. Whether you’re one the Zero Draft or the tenth, see if you already have some red herrings in place. If so, are they fully developed and ruled out well in the end? If you don’t have any, will they help your story or hurt it by adding them? Is there another way you can use this concept, or parts of it to enhance your writing? Run through these questions and see what you come up with.

The best compliment you can receive when using red herrings is that the reader “should have seen it coming!” This small statement means that you balanced your world’s realities, engaged your readers mind, and created something worth re-reading. While this will take practice and a lot of work, I hope this post has started you on your journey of mastering the red herring.

Additional Resources

• Books on craft:
  • Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass (on layering and complexity)
  • The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri (on inevitable surprise)
  • How to Write a Mystery edited by Lee Child (excellent essays on fair play)
• SF/F specific resources:
  • Brandon Sanderson’s First Law of Magic: “An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic” (essential for fair play in fantasy)
  • Writing Excuses episodes on plot twists and mysteries
  • Orson Scott Card’s Characters and Viewpoint (on controlling reader information)
• Examples to study for red herrings:
  • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (the gold standard for fair play misdirection)
  • Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson (multiple layered mysteries and reveals)
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (Sirius Black as red herring)
  • The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (subverting fantasy expectations)
  • Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (unreliable narration as misdirection)

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