Mystery Tips: Mastering the Art of Misdirection

What would a good mystery novel be without clues?

Half the joy of digging into a genre like mystery or suspense is the thrill of trying to solve the puzzle — of noticing the little crumbs the author has left in the pages and piecing them together to formulate a theory. When it’s too easy to figure out, readers are left feeling unsatisfied, and when it’s too difficult, they may feel cheated.

That’s why writers use misdirection to intentionally lead their readers astray, pointing them in the wrong direction in order to make the final resolution all the more shocking. The idea is to keep readers guessing and prevent them from figuring out the ending too soon.

To pull off misdirection well, you’ll need to have a good understanding of foreshadowing and a handle on subtlety. That’s because when a hint or misleading clue is too obvious, readers can often see right through it.

Keep reading for some of my best tips on how to incorporate misdirection in a mystery or thriller novel.

Embrace red herrings

To throw up some obstacles along the path to the truth, mystery and thriller writers often turn to a classic plot device: The red herring. This term is used to describe a detail, clue, or piece of information that stands out and draws both the characters’ and the reader’s attention, leading them into a particular line of thought or inquiry. It could be a book, a note, a particular word—any little thing that makes the character think they know the answer behind the mystery.

Let’s say your sleuth is investigating the murder of a local woman who is found dead in the confessional at the Catholic church. She’s found still clutching a rosary, and inside her purse is a crumpled flier for the upcoming church bazaar. The sleuth immediately suspects her death had something to do with the church and spends the next few chapters interrogating the priest and the members of the bazaar planning committee.

But the sleuth will eventually realize that the woman was killed not by the priest or by a disgruntled church lady, but by her husband, who believed she’d been having an affair with her bible study partner. The setting of the crime scene and the flier for the church bazaar were red herrings, designed to distract us from the truth.

The trick with red herrings is that by the end of the book, your characters—and readers—will realize that these clues actually had nothing to with the resolution at all. Instead, they pushed our protagonist off course, complicating their journey to solve the mystery at hand.

Use ambiguity to your advantage

Some of the best plot twists I’ve read are ones that capitalize on our assumptions. In other words, sometimes all you need to do is let the reader fill in the blanks, and they’ll take themselves off in the wrong direction naturally. To make this kind of misdirection work, you’ll need to get good at strategic ambiguity, or knowing when to leave things unsaid.

For example, perhaps your protagonist often refers to her ex-husband through her inner monologue, recounting how he abused her during their marriage. A few chapters into the book, we’re introduced to her ex-husband, Bill, who seems to be trying to find his way back into her life. Because your protagonist never refers to her ex-husband by name in the narration, your reader will assume Bill and the abusive ex-husband are one and the same. But then you reveal that, actually, the abusive ex was her first husband, Jeremy, the same man she suspects of stalking her now. And your reader will never see it coming.

This principle can be applied in many different ways. Maybe you’re omitting a point-of-view character’s identity, the specifics of a relationship, the exact timing of a particular event or flashback, or some other key plot point. To pull it off, you’ll need to make the omission feel natural rather than glaring, with just enough detail to make it easy for your reader to misinterpret the true meaning.

Hide foreshadowing in plain sight

The key to good foreshadowing is often to make readers notice details without realizing how important they are. This is closely tied to the concept of Chekhov’s gun, when an object or idea is casually introduced early on in the story, but its true significance doesn’t become apparent until much later, often during the climax.

This also means that every detail included in your story should have a specific purpose and contribution to the narrative. The principle gets its name from Anton Chekhov, who wrote, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

When developing foreshadowing, try to weave details in seamlessly in a way that makes sense in the present scene. If you need to establish that a character’s boots are red in order to hint at a future moment in which this information becomes pivotal, don’t write a whole conversation focused only on their boots. Instead, knit the detail into a scene that moves the plot forward in some other way, so that your reader’s attention will be trained on the action rather than the clue.

In this case, you might include the detail in a scene where your characters are asked to take their shoes off when going into someone’s home to conduct an interview. As the detective sets his shiny black loafers next to his second-in-command’s red boots, he notices a pair of muddy shoes by the door that appear to match the size of the footprints discovered at the crime scene. See how your reader might be distracted by the plot point that seems important — a potential lead on a piece of evidence — rather than the one that actually is?

Ideal moments for this type of foreshadowing don’t always present themselves when you're deep in the drafting process, which is why many writers prefer to insert hints and misdirection as they edit. Once a draft is complete, it’s easier to look at the big picture and identify places you can subtly lead your reader astray.

What’s your favorite method of misdirection?