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Chekhov’s Gun
Chekhov’s Gun is a literary device in which an element is mentioned in a story and its purpose or significance becomes clear later. For example, early in a story, the narrative mentions that the hero carries a knife. Later, he uses that knife to defend himself in a fight. If the knife hadn’t been mentioned earlier, it might feel like an object of convenience. On the other hand, if the knife is mentioned but he never uses it, the reader might feel cheated after anticipating a good knife fight.
The real purpose of Chekhov’s Gun is to remind writers that they have an obligation to fulfill all promises made to readers. If the narrative mentions that the hero carries a knife, the reader expects that he will, at some point, use it. If he doesn’t, the writer has failed to fulfill a promise. In other words: don’t pepper your story with unnecessary, insignificant, or meaningless elements. Make everything count!
The term “Chekhov’s Gun” comes from a letter from Anton Chekhov to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev (also known as A.S. Gruzinsky) in which he said, “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”
Red herring is an intentional deception on the part of an author to mislead readers from the truth. This device is often used in mystery and suspense novels so that the audience does not pick up on the truth so early that it would kill dramatic effect.
What is a Red Herring?
An example of red herring would be putting a child to bed for the night. Most children want to try and stay up and will start asking their parents questions. A mother telling her child that it is time for bed might be met with a response such as “where do clouds come from?” in order to prompt the mother to elaborate thus resulting in the child staying out of bed. In terms of its use in literature, this type of distraction works well to keep readers in suspense.
Red Herrings vs. Other Logical Fallacies
Red herrings are a type of logical fallacy; specifically, they are considered an informal fallacy.
Logical fallacies involve mistruths misleading the mind and an informal fallacy, specifically, deals with unclear statements in which the language can be reasonably interpreted to explain something in more than one way. A formal fallacy, on the other hand involves an error in the expression and whether or not the original content can be considered valid.
Red herrings are a type of informal fallacy because the possibilities for their interpretation and validity can be argued in several different ways that might all uphold reasonable points. Red herrings can relate to several different types of logical fallacies such as:
- Ad hominem – appealing to feelings rather than intellect, specifically an attack on someone’s character. Like red herrings, ad hominem can be used to deceive audiences
- Non sequitur – statements that do not follow fundamental principles of logic/reasoning and often create a comedic effect. This differs from red herrings because the logic cannot be upheld and any deceptions are due to invalid logic, rather than deception
- Other logical fallacies include false dilemma, strawman arguments, and begging the question
The Importance of a Red Herring
Red herring is mostly used in the mystery genre to distract the reader from guessing the culprit too early. In a mystery novel, the red herring might be signs that point at one character being the killer the whole time, but it was ultimately someone else. This sort of confusion keeps readers stimulated throughout the entirely of the story. Otherwise, they might figure it all out too soon and lose interest.
In arguments, red herrings are used to dodge difficult conversations or questions. This is done by answering a question or speaking on a topic in a matter that is really just addressing something else altogether. Overall, red herrings create tension and are a powerful tool for distractions.
From http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/literary-devices/red-herring
Some additional key details about red herrings:
- Red herrings build suspense and help storytellers execute dramatic plot twists.
- Red herrings are a staple of mystery novels and “whodunits,” but they appear in other kinds of stories as well. 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.
Coincidental vs. Intentional Red Herrings
Red herrings can be either coincidental or intentional.
- 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.
- 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. 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.
- A coincidental red herring is a piece of information that happens to mislead the reader or a character within the story. While the author would have placed this false clue intentionally, it is considered a coincidental red herring because, in 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.
Origin of the Term Red Herring
Learning the origin of the term “red herring” might help you to remember its meaning. 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.
Dog 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. To test the dogs’ abilities, the trainers would supposedly drag a smelly pickled fish across the trail the dogs were supposed to follow in an attempt to mislead the dogs. Thus, in literature, a red herring is a false clue that leads readers or characters astray.
Red Herring Examples in Literature
The following examples of red herrings in literature are taken from both mystery novels and genres of literature. They illustrate the range of ways the plot device can be used to add complexity and suspense to a plot.
Red Herring in A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
In A Study in Scarlet, police inspector Lestrade finds the the word “RACHE” written in blood on a wall at the scene of a murder. He assumes that the murderer had begun to write the name Rachel, but then had to flee the scene before he could finish. The novel’s protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, informs Lestrade that “rache” in fact is German for “revenge” and warns him not to waste time looking for a woman named Rachel. Later, however, Sherlock comes to the conclusion that the clue is actually a red herring—a clue intentionally planted to mislead the police. He tells his assistant:
As to poor Lestrade’s discovery it was simply a blind intended to put the police upon a wrong track, by suggesting Socialism and secret societies. It was not done by a German. The A, if you noticed, was printed somewhat after the German fashion. Now, a real German invariably prints in the Latin character, so that we may safely say that this was not written by one, but by a clumsy imitator who overdid his part. It was simply a ruse to divert inquiry into a wrong channel.
In this case, the word “RACHE” is an intentional red herring because the murderer purposefully created a “false clue” in the hopes that it would lead investigators astray. In this instance, “RACHE” also acts as a kind of double red herring: the clue briefly misleads Sherlock in the way that the murderer intended it to, but it misleads Lestrade in a completely different way because Lestrade does not know the German word for revenge. The red herring opens the door to many different interpretations of the story’s events, building a sense of suspense and curiosity that pushes the reader to keep reading.
Red Herring in And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
In And Then There Were None, ten people who are guilty of murder but were never convicted for their crimes are invited to a remote island. Their host never appears, and the guests find themselves trapped. One by one, they begin to die in ways resembling the deaths of the characters in the nursery rhyme “Ten Little Soldiers,” and the guests realize that someone on the island is planning their deaths. After the number of guests still alive drops to five, Justice Wargrave is shot and Doctor Armstrong disappears, leaving only three people in the house: Vera, Lombard, and Blore. Vera remembers that a verse of the nursery rhyme mentions a red herring:
“You’ve forgotten the nursery rhyme. Don’t you see there’s a clue there?” She recited in a meaning voice: “Four little Indian boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.” She went on: “A red herring—that’s the vital clue. Armstrong’s not dead… He took away the china Indian to make you think he was. You may say what you like—Armstrong’s on the island still. His disappearance is just a red herring across the track…”
Vera is right that they have been tricked, but in fact, Wargrave is the one who has orchestrated the guests’ deaths. In the novel’s epilogue, we learn that Armstrong agreed to help Wargrave fake his own death, and Wargrave then killed Armstrong. Wargrave’s apparent murder by Armstrong is the novel’s red herring. This is an intentional red herring, as Wargrave planned to fake his own death, and timed Armstrong’s disappearance as the fourth-to-last so that the poem would suggest that Armstrong’s death was the one that had been faked.
Red Herring in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
In the first chapter of Great Expectations, the protagonist, Pip, meets an escaped convict in a graveyard. After the convict threatens him, Pip agrees to help the man by bringing him food and a metal file to free him from his leg iron. Not long after, Pip is invited to the home of the wealthy Miss Havisham and her niece, Estella, and makes a series of visits there. When Pip learns that an anonymous benefactor will pay for him to be educated as a gentleman, he assumes that his new patron is Miss Havisham; many years later, he meets the convict, Provis, again and discovers that his guess was incorrect. Provis tells Pip:
Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that he could make a gentleman,—and, Pip, you’re him!
At first, the “mystery” of Pip’s benefactor does not seem to be much of a mystery at all—it seems clear that Miss Havisham paid for his education. However, Pip’s visits with Miss Havisham were a coincidental red herring, leading Pip and the reader to believe that the money had come from a legitimate source. Therefore, Pip’s understanding of his own life and his social class are completely transformed by his discovery that a convict—not an heiress—had funded his education. Miss Havisham is a coincidental red herring because she had no way of knowing that Pip’s education would be paid for by anyone, and Provis had no way of knowing that Pip knew a wealthy heiress, so no one in the story intended for Pip to be misled.
From https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/red-herring
IV. Examples of Red Herring in Literature
Example 1
Red herrings are all over the place in the Harry Potter In The Prisoner of Azkaban, for example, the plot initially surrounds the threat posed by Sirius Black, who has escaped from Azkaban and is coming to kill Harry. Everything about him, right down to his name, makes him appear to be a villain. It turns out, though, that Sirius Black is not coming after Harry at all – he is actually trying to get into Hogwarts so that he could protect Harry from Peter Pettigrew, who has been hiding in plain sight all along.
Example 2
Red herrings are most traditionally associated with mystery novels, especially the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, for example, the obvious suspect is the butler – one of the key clues is that the murderer has a beard, as the butler does. In addition, this particular butler has a mysterious habit of skulking about the house late at night. It turns out, though, that his behavior is entirely innocent, and the murderer is someone else.
V. Examples of Red Herring in Pop Culture
Example 1
In the first episode of Firefly, the crew accidentally take a Federal agent on board, and have to figure out which of their passengers it is. All clues point to Simon Tam, a mysterious figure who asks lots of questions and refuses to discuss his reason for being on the ship. However, all these clues are red herrings, as it turns out Simon is not the agent – rather, he is a fugitive from the law, which explains his unwillingness to talk openly about his past.
Example 2
In the early episodes of Game of Thrones, Viserys Targaryen appears to be a major threat– he is the son of the Mad King, and obsessed with conquering the Westlands and reclaiming his father’s throne. However, Viserys doesn’t make it past the first season; he is immediately killed after upsetting Khal Drogo. We soon realize that his sister, Daenerys, is the real threat.
From https://literaryterms.net/red-herring/
Here are five strategies for creating red herrings:
1. Choose an innocent character and give him a motive that makes him a strong suspect in the murder of a victim. Near the climax of the novel, reveal something that proves the character’s innocence. Maybe the victim was blackmailing the red herring character—strong motive. However, the red herring was in the drunk tank the night of the murder.
2. Put an innocent character at the scene of the crime. Maybe he had come to drop something off for a friend who lives across the street from the victim’s house and had parked for a moment in the victim’s driveway. A suspicious neighbor saw him pull out of the driveway. She wrote down his car license number. Bang! He is a suspect.
3. Create a guilty character who seems innocent because there is no evidence of motive, weapon or opportunity. At the climax of the story, have the sleuth connect several seemingly unrelated clues planted throughout the story, then uncover the guilty character’s motive, weapon and opportunity.
4. A great technique is to have the sleuth follow a trail of clues that leads to the wrong person. The more convinced the sleuth is of the person’s guilt the more she will pursue and the more she pursues, the more exciting the story becomes. This strategy is particularly effective when the killer has already been revealed to the reader.
5. Have the sleuth discover some items (red herrings) at the crime scene that can be interpreted in more than one way or that implicate an innocent person or are completely unrelated to the crime. The sleuth and the reader have to sort them all out.
When adding red herrings, it’s important that they are logical not just plunked into the story with no explanation. Also, keep in mind their purpose is to make the mystery novel puzzle more challenging and exciting for the reader, not to simply trip him up.
From https://globalmysteriesblog.com/2011/07/07/5-ways-to-create-red-herrings-in-a-mystery-novel/
The Exercise
Write a short scene and introduce two objects right at the opening of the scene. Make sure one of the objects is used later in the scene, but leave the other object unused. Note that these objects will not be part of the descriptive content. For example, if the scene includes a description of a room and mentions a chair in the corner, you don’t have to use the chair later because it is part of the setting description.
Let your scene sit overnight and then read it back the next day. Notice how the unused object lingers in the reader’s mind in an unpleasant way. Once you’re done, feel free to revise and edit out the unnecessary object or add action in which it becomes significant.
Tips: Differentiating between what constitutes a necessary or unnecessary element can be tricky. In some cases, a knife that is mentioned may not need to be played later (for example, a knife might be mentioned in the context of one of the characters eating). In other cases, a chair that is mentioned will need to be played. A woman might carry a purse, but that doesn’t mean she needs to retrieve anything from it because most women carry purses. On the other hand, if she’s carrying a file marked “TOP SECRET,” the reader expects to eventually be let in on the contents of the file.
Variations: Go through a story you’ve already written and look for instances in which you included unnecessary or misleading elements.
Applications: The difference between excellence and mediocrity in storytelling often lies in the details. Chekhov’s Gun is one of the many details that could cause a story to lose credibility with readers. Therefore, checking your narrative for unnecessary or irrelevant elements will strengthen and improve your work.
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