I think this is the right place for this, it’s the only category that seems to fit 
I suddenly got the idea (likely too late in the evening for my brain to handle 
) of making a scene a red herring. This would mean that I wouldn’t have to do a complete re-write of the chapter and maybe the chapter after. Problem is I’ve never written a red herring before 
Can someone tell me how to go about this? My heroine has been kidnapped and my first thought was to have her be held in a room above a restaurant. But on second thought the rescue wouldn’t be dramatic enough or as remote a setting as I wanted it. I want to leave the restaurant as a red herring. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice? I’ve looked on the internet but that just confused me and our library system is closed right now.
If this needs to go in another category please let me know. I haven’t posted enough here yet to know the ins and outs, thanks.
Can you explain a bit more? How is the restaurant a red herring?
Do you mean it seems like she is in red trouble but she actually gets rescued immediately?
To me, a red herring is more like “she is told early on that her husband is the murderer but actually it’s just a red herring — the real killer is someone else.”
Hmmmm. Perhaps have the rescuers become convinced the restaurant is where she’s being held. Everything can then be the same as you (probably) have already written or planned, except the room above is empty. No indication at all anything happened there - maybe dusty etc with no disturbance showing. So your hot tip/deduction/whatever turns out to be flat wrong.
Is that what you mean?
Yes, that’s what I had in mind. They trace a logo to a restaurant. The items were in the heroine’s possession so the police and her boyfriend believe that she has to be there. I need to leave a clue at the restaurant to lead them to where she is actually being held. (of course, I could have her boyfriend throw someone up against a wall and glare the information out of him 
)
Maybe what I’m looking for isn’t a red herring but something else that I can’t put a name to. Tannis had the right idea of what I was thinking though. Thanks Tannis
How about: make the reveal of the red herring also reveal something about the characters. So the plot doesn’t move forwards exactly — but the reader knows more about these protagonists. Maybe the bf discovers he doesn’t know her as well as he thought: the clue she left him seems more mysterious than he realised…
That’s something to think about, Daniel. She didn’t exactly leave the clue. A ring she was given by the mother of a friend that died has the Japanese character that the restaurant uses as the logo. She put it in a safety deposit box in the bank. She was going to the bank to do day to day banking on the day she was kidnapped, and did not return. So the police question the teller that served her and she produces the ring.
The closest thing I can think of as other examples to examine for what I believe is being described in this thread would be the way that Robert Langdon follows clues in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code* and Angels and Demons stories.
Robert Langdon is often in a race against time to save lives by interpreting religious symbology at various locations. He often interprets the symbology one way only to have to reassess and interpret a new but equally plausible correct way once they are there to actually follow the clue to the next location. Sometimes it isn’t a reinterpretation required but recalling that at some point in history a statute or a painting or something used to be in a different location.
P.S. I used some of my new community powers to recategorize this under Craft of Fiction. Hopefully no feathers were ruffled in the move.
Hi Argent,
First, no I don’t mind at all that you changed the category. I looked for the best one I could put it under and this was the only one I saw that would fit. Actually, I never know where to put my posts, LOL! No feathers ruffled at all
That is what I went with. I decided that the withdrawal slip from the bank she was coming back from when she was taken accidentally falls out onto the seat of the car and the police find it. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get them to Kagel Canyon (Los Angeles) and find her. I decided on the exact location and the building she’s held in and rewrote that section yesterday. It is sooo much better than it was, and with more after effects to deal with after she’s rescued. Now to figure out what that slip of paper means! 
Thanks!
I saw a law and order SVU where they were looking for a school aged girl that had called in and didn’t know where she was being held but was able to describe a logo on some food packages and describe sounds around her. They finally pinned down where this food vendor shop was at but it had been closed down due to new construction and the apartment overlooking the food vendors came up clean / vacated, but the girl kept calling the help line. As I recall they found her shallow buried but still alive at the construction site. She had been being held in another area/ attic or office or something, the kidnapper had just reused old food container cups, the girl being from another country with language barriers had confused the situation. Anyway it was pretty impressive on the slight of hand of where the girl was being held. I’ll see if I can’t find the episode number.
Thanks Deanna,
That actually is very similar to what I wrote. A logo seen on the hood they cover her head with (the car almost collides with another whose owners get a glimpse of the number of people in the car and the wife believes that the logo is the same as the one found on the restaurant menu.)
Ok I found it. Law and order SVU season 7, episode 3 “911”
I think you’re idea is great! Crimes/mysteries are solved with exactly this kind of evidence.
Anyway this episodes shows how they successfully handled the red herring and suspense for rescue with a similar clue.
I thought it was one of their most memorable episodes.
SVU streams on Hulu. The episode is available there.
Thanks DeAnna,
I will look for the episode.