Herrings That Don't Stink: with Hart Johnson

Thank you, Laurel, for hosting me!

 I tend to be a bit of a goofball, so it may have escaped those of you who know me that I know some stuff. Writing mysteries has some tricks to it... which is GOOD, as the GOAL with genre mystery is to both give your reader everything they need to solve the mystery AND not make it too easy to solve—keep them guessing up until the end, but in such a way that they look back and think I SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT!
 

One of the primary tools of this mission is the Red Herring. What IS a red herring? you may wonder (if mystery isn't something you've dabbled in). They are the clues leading the reader (and sleuth) directly to the WRONG conclusion.

Genre mystery tends to have a couple things and I am working with these as an assumption, so you should probably know what they are: a dead body, a sleuth trying to solve the mystery (with an amateur sleuth this tends to be because somebody she cares about is either dead or implicated), and suspects. I should emphasize that. SuspectS. More than one. The sleuth goes through the evidence and looks at the possible people, and generally changes her mind as she goes (most often because the clue that links them, turns out to have an alternative explanation, or the suspect is proven impossible (or turns up dead)...)

So how do I plot my herrings?

I generally start with my list of suspects and give ALL of them a motive to kill the dead guy. I like to draw this... 4 or 5 suspects is sort of the sweet spot with cozy mysteries, fewer in some of the darker sub-genres. But the point is, the SLEUTH at least can see a reason ALL of these people might want the victim dead. THEN I come up with the ways the sleuth might learn of those motives... the clues, all but one strand of which are herrings.

With so many suspects, it is best if a couple of them are connected to each other and those herrings are somewhat related, too. Otherwise the book can feel sort of 'listee'. (this is one of the reasons I like to draw this--I can link all the related pieces visually to help me make sense of it for plotting.)

So what ARE these?

Sometimes this is physical evidence [in my first cozy mystery, The Azalea Assault, the sleuth finds a CD proving two of the characters were formerly in a band with the dead guy, so it gives a history to look into], it could be a witness account, or gossip, or some other dug-up information (via internet or public records maybe) or perhaps it's a character acting 'out of character' (sneaking around). These can even be combined. I have a second tier character who is a police officer and his girlfriend is my sleuth's best friend, so sometimes what we are working with is rumors about physical evidence.

And a trick I learned from Elizabeth Spann Craig, which I find helpful... have ALL your suspects tell at least one lie... could be for as simple a reason as they are embarrassed, or as complicated as they think a loved one did it (whether they DID or not), but it is helpful to have the reader not 100% trust what ANYBODY says, not to mention the lie itself can be a clue or herring.

One of the tricks here is to mix it up—if you have an entirely gossip based fact-finding mission... *yawn* Another is to have a couple multi-pronged herrings (herrings that LOOK like they mean one thing, but ACTUALLY mean another... in fact maybe it isn't a herring AT ALL but a halibut leading you in the right direction, once you wipe off all that herring oil... or something.

Is the fish analogy going too far? Sorry about that. Seriously, though. The OTHER things herrings need are the REAL explanation. One by one all those herrings must be picked up and sniffed and if they ARE herrings, they need to be identified as such—it is unfair to the reader to just leave them out there unclaimed or unexplained.


Hart Johnson works as a social scientist at a large midwestern university by day, and by night plots grand conspiracies, life angst and murder. As a writer she suffers multiple identity disorder, writing cozy mysteries as Alyse Carlson, suspense and conspiracies under the name Hart Johnson, suspects she will need a new name when the young adult begins to be published, and blogs as The Watery Tart.

Hart's Books The Garden Society Mystery Series (by Alyse Carlson) feature Camellia Harris, the 30-something public relations guru, her best (zany) friend Annie, and assorted other friends and family.

The Azalea Assault and The Begonia Bribe are available through typical bookstores, and Keeping Mum will be released March 4. (All are also available through B&N or Amazon, but my local Indie bookstore has been so amazing, that I always suggest checking there first) A Shot in the Light: Hart is also serially releasing a flu conspiracy thriller tale, 100 pages at a time. The first six are available (about half). New episodes come out about once a month.

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Abracadabra! Using sleight of hand in fiction

Narrative misdirection is a writerly trick of establishing false expectations in your readers, directing their attention to the wrong information and causing them to ignore correct information. It's an excellent way to surprise them, and has uses in nearly every genre, though it is a staple of mysteries.

J.K. Rowling happens to be a master of this technique. Time and again, Harry is certain he knows who the villain is, and every time he is wrong! Author and blogger John Granger goes into a great deal of detail about Rowling's method in his book Unlocking Harry Potter.

In my novel Never Gone, I also played with the technique in various places. For example, take a look at this excerpt from chapter 12.

Go ahead. I'll wait for you.

You're back? Excellent. Did you see how misdirection can be an effective tool to make humorous moments funnier?

I'll explain the elements of narrative misdirection by walking you through what I did, and why and how I did it.

1. Limited viewpoint. My piece is in first person. The only perceptions you have are Dani's. There's a good possibility that she does not have the whole picture. She very well might misinterpret the data in front of her. But it's hard for you, the reader, to know that because I've removed other sources of interpretation by limiting the perception to only what she directly experiences, knows, or remembers.

Rowling uses third person limited. Omniscient narrators are a no-no in this technique. Your POV must limit perception.

2. Sympathetic voice and reader identification. Dani's internal monologue paints her as a smart, arty dreamer who's a bit shy. She obeys her aunt grumblingly, having thoughts of being put-upon with "stupid" assignments. Everyone has felt this way at one point or another. As a reader, you sympathize and take her side. You become willing to trust her judgments about what is happening and why.

3. Playing with expectation. Aunts are those sorts of benevolent authority figures we expect to play "the straight man" in any joke. I describe Cecily having a young child who is usually weaving through her legs or swinging from her purse strap, which cements a picture in your mind: maternal and focused there. I give you only the details that would support your existing expectations of "aunt."

4. Clues the character chooses to ignore. This is VERY important. The truth must be in the scene and there for the astute reader to pick up. Otherwise you just have very annoying out-of-nowhere surprises, not narrative misdirection.

I hint that Janie should be around, and that she had been playing a game called "guerrilla stealth"--a name that implies unexpected combat. I also point out that Aunt Cecily is the instigator of Dani ever leaving the cathedral nave and going into the quire. As a reader, you chose to ignore the importance because Dani does.

5. Details that capture your MC's attention. Does the beauty of Durham cathedral's quire really matter that much? Or the fact that the guide has an exotic accent? No, but as a reader you're willing to be pulled along in Dani's flight of fancy because of the style in this paragraph. I used a little writerly magic dust of pretty words and alliteration and imagery to momentarily sweep you into Dani's distraction.

Keep in mind you can't do pages of this kind of thing, but just a paragraph can be an effective "sleight of hand." It's like the "jazz-hands" dazzle that magicians use to point you away from the real action.

Likewise, drawing Dani's attention primarily to the guy she tripped over keeps you, the reader, from looking deeper into what her family members are doing.

6. Confirm misinterpretations. Both Aunt Cecily and Janie play to Dani's expectation. The aunt scolds, the cousin becomes "ashy pale" at the scolding. And it's no small scolding. The aunt's big reaction cements the misinterpretation as true.

7. Payoff, in which misinterpretations are clarified. This is one tiny detail you might be tempted to overlook. Do wrap up how the surprise really happened, because it's annoying to the reader when you don't. Rowling always does. In my little scene, it was a simple exchange: "You weren't supposed to tell your mum" and "you never said that." I didn't have to give a detailed back story of how or when Janie and Cecily planned their trick on Dani. The reader can imagine it easily enough. But I did need to make it clear they were in cahoots deliberately from the beginning or the payoff would have fallen flat, because readers just wouldn't buy it.


So there you go, a quick primer on the basics of simple narrative misdirection. In mysteries, of course, it gets considerably more complicated. The author must layer in clues and dazzling distractions, one on top of another.

How do you think you might use this technique in your writing?

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