{"id":791,"date":"2014-07-29T13:16:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T20:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/?p=791"},"modified":"2018-10-07T08:34:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-07T15:34:41","slug":"writing-with-red-herrings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/writing-with-red-herrings\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing with Red Herrings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wp1f5f0204_06\"<\/a>Excerpted from:<\/em><\/p>\n

50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks!<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Melanie Anne Phillips<\/p>\n

Available in Paperback<\/a> and for\u00a0Kindle<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The old expression, \u201cA Red Herring,\u201d means something that is intentionally misleading. In storytelling, a red herring is a scene, which is set up intentionally to mislead an audience.<\/p>\n

One example is in the movie, \u201cThe Fugitive,\u201d with Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble. He escapes from the prison bus, gets some street clothes, and is on the run.<\/p>\n

He waits under a bridge and when an associate that he worked with stops his car for a red light, Kimble steps out and pretends to be a homeless person trying to wash his windshield for a buck. He uses this action as a \u201ccover\u201d while he holds a conversation with the associate to get some information and help.<\/p>\n

In the background, out of focus, a police car slowly approach behind the associate\u2019s car. You don\u2019t see it at first because you are concentrating on the conversation. The police car stops. Suddenly, it\u2019s lights and siren comes on. The audience is sure the jig is up. Kimble turns to look at it, and the police car whips around the associate\u2019s car and takes off for some call it received.<\/p>\n

The initial impression was that Kimble was about to be recaptured because the cops had recognized him. The \u201creality\u201d was that they were just on patrol, got a call, and sped off with sirens wailing.<\/p>\n

Red Herrings can be used for anything from the momentary shock value as above, to making a bad guy appear to be a good guy.<\/p>\n

To make it work, you have to do two primary things:<\/p>\n

1. Don\u2019t leave out essential information or the audience will feel manipulated. Tricking your audience by misleading them is fun for them. But if you fool them by leaving out information they would legitimately have expected to be told about, then you are just screwing with them.<\/p>\n

Red herrings are best accomplished by having information that is taken in one context and then the context is changed. This way, you aren\u2019t holding back, you are just changing the perspective.<\/p>\n

Your audience invests its emotions in your story. You don\u2019t want to violate them. As an example, there is an old joke about a nurse in a maternity ward who comes in to a mother\u2019s room carrying the new baby. She trips and falls and the baby hits the floor. Then, she gets mad at it for falling, picks it up, swings it around and bashes it against the wall. The mother is in hysterics. The nurse picks up the kid and says, \u201cApril Fool \u2013 it was born dead.\u201d Don\u2019t do this to your audience.<\/p>\n

A better approach is to see a mom yank her child by the arm in a very abusive way while walking down the street. First reaction is she is an ogre and you run to stop her. Just then, you see the truck come whipping around the corner that would\u2019ve hit and killed the child, and you stop in your tracks realizing the mom was saving his life. You look again, and the is hugging and holding him, and she is crying because he was almost lost, and because she startled him.\u2028Psychologists call it \u201cPrimary Attribution Error,\u201d and you can use it to your advantage. If done properly, they will love you for it.<\/p>\n

2. Don\u2019t change the rules of the game just to make things happen another way or the audience will feel that you lied to them.<\/p>\n

The audience will give you their trust. They expect that what you tell them is the truth. They build on each bit of information, trying to understand the big picture.<\/p>\n

You can easily change context to show something in a different light, but don\u2019t tell them one thing and then simply say, \u201cOh that wasn\u2019t true, I was just messing with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is a sure way to lose their trust, and once lost, you\u2019ll never get it back.<\/p>\n

Write your novel or screenplay step by step…<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpted from: 50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks! By Melanie Anne Phillips Available in Paperback and for\u00a0Kindle   The old expression, \u201cA Red Herring,\u201d means something that is intentionally misleading. In storytelling, a red herring is a scene, which is set up intentionally to mislead an audience. One example is in the movie, \u201cThe Fugitive,\u201d with Harrison […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p36xpN-cL","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}