Red herring is a pungent type of pickled fish, but people began to use the term to describe a false or misleading clue because of the way that this pickled fish was often used to train hunting dogs.ĭog trainers would teach dogs to hunt by creating a trail of scent for dogs to follow, but a hunting dog needs to be able to follow the scent of a single animal without being distracted by other interesting scents. Learning the origin of the term "red herring" might help you to remember its meaning.
While the author would have placed this false clue intentionally, it is considered a coincidental red herring because, i n the world of the story, it appears by coincidence. A character within the story did not place the false clue with the intention of misleading someone. A coincidental red herring is a piece of information that happens to mislead the reader or a character within the story.A detective trying to solve the crime might find the gloves and waste time trying to establish person C's motives for murder before realizing that someone else was in fact guilty. For example, if person A was murdered by person B, but person B wanted to make it appear that person C was the murderer, person B might steal person's C's gloves and leave them at the scene of the crime.An intentional red herring is a false clue that a character in the story has created in order to intentionally mislead the person trying to solve the mystery.Red herrings can be either coincidental or intentional. Stories with any sort of plot twist or surprise endings often rely on red herrings to distract the audience (and some of the characters) from what is actually going on.Ĭoincidental vs. Red herrings are a staple of mystery novels and "whodunits," but they appear in other kinds of stories as well.Red herrings build suspense and help storytellers execute dramatic plot twists.Some additional key details about red herrings: Most often, the term red herring is used to refer to a "false clue"-a piece of evidence that misleads readers to believe that a crime (or other action) was committed by someone other than the actual culprit. What is a red herring? Here’s a quick and simple definition:Ī red herring is a piece of information in a story that distracts readers from an important truth, or leads them to mistakenly expect a particular outcome.
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