‘She eteþ no ffyssh But heryng red’

Q: When is a fish not a fish?

A: When it’s a red herring:

In a literal sense, there is no such fish as a "red herring"; it refers to a particularly strong kipper, a fish (typically a herring) that has been strongly cured in brine and/or heavily smoked. This process makes the fish particularly pungent smelling and, with strong enough brine, turns its flesh reddish. (Red Herring - Wikipedia) 

In a literary sense, red herrings are the tasty but irrelevant tidbits the writer cooks up to distract the reader and lure them towards a false conclusion. 

I love a good salty literary device, and done well, a red herring will create intrigue and tension, set up a plot twist or surprise ending, or add flavour to the piece with extra details that support the story in other ways.

Done badly, a red herring is as unpalatable as an oversalted kipper. It can confuse or irritate your reader, or even gut the plausibility out of the whole story. So use them sparingly and well. The aim is to hook your reader, not to cut the line.

There are a few ways to do this in a non-mystery story, so that your red herring adds substance without smelling fishy –

Your character catches the fish. Place discordant objects or details in the character’s environment that they notice immediately, or remember later, to introduce doubt. Caveat: to be tasty, there needs to be another explanation for the herring that is consistent with your larger story world.

Your character eats the fish. Bait your main character’s point of view or internal dialogue with incorrect assumptions to seed these assumptions into the reader’s mind. 

Your characters bring the fish. Put multiple characters in a situation of uncertainty and raise the stakes, so that they react in ways they think are plausibly deniable, creating further uncertainty. This works when there is a question about motives or when the relationship dynamics are important for your plot.

The reader catches the fish. Give your reader the red herring through description and action, without your point-of-view character being aware of it. This allows you to mess deliciously with your reader’s assumptions, by causing them to think they know something the protagonist doesn’t, and then letting the character beat them to the correct conclusion.

     

The writer cooks a fish pie. Serve the mother of all red herrings, baked into the story as a whole. By using the language, imagery, setting, plot structure of one story type, you cause the reader to expect a plot that conforms to that type of story, and then hit them with a denouement that subverts all their assumptions back to the very first line of the story. (You know it's worked when they go straight back to the start to read it a second time). This works best in speculative fiction, across sub-genres, or where you can execute the red herring at the world-building level. Caveat: I’ve put fish pie on The Menu before, but it was a short piece, and it may not be possible or even desirable to sustain it in a longer form. 

There is only one rule: every red herring must be double-headed. Every detail must support the story in more than one way. In addition to the misdirection they provide, they should add colour and depth to the themes, mood, settings, character development, and the dynamics at play. Most of all they need to provoke questions in the reader’s mind that will drive them to keep guessing and to keep reading.

So what is it about these imaginary fish that makes them so appealing? 

One word: Curiosity.  

Red herrings create ambiguity and uncertainty, an information gap that stimulates curiosity. And curiosity is a powerful drive, using parts of the brain involved with craving, motivation and reward. In short, red herrings will make your reader’s brain irresistibly hungry for the rest of your story. Ultimately always insubstantial, the red herring is best served as an appetiser – a juicy morsel of promise that demands you to follow through with something more satisfying.