Mystery Writer Tanya French on How to Write a Red Herring

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Via Vulture: How to Write a Red Herring

French has published seven mysteries.

She’s famously good at a particularly eerie brand of red herring — that alluring detail that seems like the key to solving the crime, only to prove a clever bit of misdirection. . . . French’s red herrings are not just shiny lures but windows into her protagonists’ deepest fears and flaws. Here, she walks us through how she lays the tracks, starting with the red-herring masters she admires.

This strikes me as an interesting discussion by one author of her process.

What do you think?
 

Helix

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It's an interesting view of red herrings -- that they are a product of the fallible investigative character. It makes the story character-driven and organic, something that doesn't always happen in crime novels.
 

Silva

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This is really interesting because I think it's the first time I've seen someone define red herrings in a craft-centered way rather than as a simple definition.

It's also encouraging because I'm doing essentially the same thing--letting a character by mislead by his fears, and find credible-ish reasons to justify them--so I feel like I might be on the right track here. (We'll see.)
 

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I absolutely love this! I'm new to mystery writing (but have always loved reading them) and it seems that by necessity it can be fairly formulaic. Having a red herring that's character-driven really gives me something to think about.
 

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Not sure I agree with the wording of the quote, it's way too dramatic. But French is pretty good at using character to create the red herrings. I'm also not sure it works in many other mystery novels since it kind of depends on French's style of character to pull it off. I'll admit I've only read two of French's books, they're not my cup of tea.

The best red herrings I've found are erroneous witness statements. Besides, those are very real.

Jeff
 

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Thank you for sharing this! French is one of my all-time favorite writers. I’ll have to try out her process on my next project...
 

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That was fascinating. I add my thanks for posting.