Writing Murder Mysteries: Red Herrings

Content warning: includes references to fictional murder and drugs

Have you ever wondered what the best way to set a false trail is? Have ‘your little grey cells’, as Poirot would say, ever tried to work out who the killer is in a murder mystery only to discover the character you were sure was the murderer turned out to have a solid alibi? Well, that’s the effect of some well-used herrings.

At the request of some of the writers in the group, we spent a session looking at the structure and approaches to writing a mystery that would not only keep a reader hooked (no fishing pun intended), but also guessing!

The suggested structure we used was sourced via Reddit: before redirecting the reader to dead-ends and false conclusions, the article suggested we had to first clarify details of the murder, who the murderer was and what their motivation was, by answering the following questions:

1. Structure the Core Mystery First

Setting: where does the murder mystery take place and when?

Who has been murdered?

How have they been murdered?

Who committed the murder (culprit)?

What real clues could you thread in through a story to hint to their guilt?

(source: Reddit)

Here is an example session created ahead of the session, to serve as an example of how one might use the above questions to lay down the bones of a murder mystery murder:

Setting: Famous popstar Amanda Zap’s 30^th birthday party, held in a glamorous holiday resort on the idyllic Sunshine Coast of Australia.

Who has been murdered? Amanda’s world-renowned agent AND partner, the billionaire 50 year-old, Chad Beck.

How have they been murdered? Chad was found overheated in the luxury outdoor sauna, the morning after Amanda’s 30^th all-night party.

Who committed the murder (culprit)? Kelly Key – She’s Amanda’s best friend from childhood who knew her, as Amanda Watson, before all the fame. Kelly’s been in love with Amanda for years and has held off on her own desires and life to stay close to Amanda, who always flirted with her and joked they’d be wives one day if Amanda was still single in her thirties. Kelly also works as Amanda’s PA.

What real clues could you thread in through a story to hint to their guilt?

At the party, Kelly encourages both Amanda and Chad to drink and take drugs…while tripping and spilling her own drink, while going into the toilet to do a line of coke (‘I don’t wanna get papped’) but the drugs are found pushed under a toilet ornament later. Kelly organised the party, arrived early and helped decorate it with the event team. She picked up the keys to the place, including the sauna. Clue: she has to have a tyre replaced while she is out running errands. The Roadside Rescue guy tries chatting her up as he leaves, saying in front of others, next time you’re driving through Bulimba, give me a call and I’ll take you to the bar there – he writes his number on a scrap of paper in the car. Later we find the scrap of paper is a receipt for the shoe repair shop in Bulimba…for a set of keys being cut. She cut a key for the sauna and locked Chad in!

This is one example of an outline of a murder. Everyone in session wrote their own and then used that as a basis to sketch out ways they could mislead the reader…

2. Pick Your Red Herring

From here, taking inspiration from crime writer Vaseem Khan (see resources list), we then chose the type of Red Herring we wanted: would we mislead our readers by having an innocent character act in a suspicious way? Or would our sleuth misinterpret a clue or jump to a conclusion about seemingly damning circumstantial evidence. Some of the writers chose to give other characters a reason to hate the victim, thus ensuring it seemed logical that multiple people wanted the late victim dead.

3. Set Up the Suspect. Have the Sleuth Stalk the Suspect!

Based on each writer’s outline of the murder, they then chose a false suspect is, what their ‘motivation’ for killing the victim was and what clues could be laid that would suggest to the detective that this false suspect did the murder. Everyone then had 15 minutes to write a scene in which the detective was obsessing about the false suspect or had just discovered the clues and is certain they did it.

We worked on creating a scene full of action so that it didn’t become too static or dialogue/speculation only. The writers were also invited to consider presenting two other pieces of information alongside the red herring, to hide it among other seemingly logical evidence/clues.

If you’re keen to start playing with misleading clues, you might take the murder outline from the example shared earlier in this blog post and weave in other characters or alternative story lines that could lead the reader away from the true murder and murderer. Please do let us know if you experiment with red herrings!

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Writing Murder Mysteries: Red Herrings