Literary Alchemy: Ingredients of the Story – Misdirection

A series designed to elevate your skills and empower you to write like a pro.

By Chrissy Hicks

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Misdirection is a sneaky literary device that leads readers to believe one thing while hiding the truth. Consider the shocking betrayal on the Ides of March, when Caeser’s best friend stabbed him in the back. Et tu Brutè? Likewise, you want your reader to never see it coming.

Why use Misdirection?

• Maintaining suspense is a primary reason to use this mechanism. Keep your audience guessing what happens next. In Lest She Forget, by Lisa Malice, the main character awakens from a coma with no memory. The storyline is chock-full of misdirections, as readers are thrust into a twisty narrative with one reveal after another, often contradicting what we (and the protagonist) originally believed was true.

• Big reveals will be more impactful when the truth contradicts earlier assumptions. Through clever misdirection, you can achieve the coveted “plot twist” reviewers can’t stop talking about! In The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), even the title hints at the main character’s rise and perceived success, leading readers to expect the realization of his dreams. Yet the true nature of Gatsby’s wealth and George’s mistaken identity, leads to a tragic ending which comes as a shock.

• Show complex character traits by exposing their true nature only when the time is right. Consider the classic by Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None. Dr. Armstrong initially comes across as competent and professional, but his past indiscretions are later revealed: operating on people while drunk and covering up his involvement in a patient’s death. These reveals create uncertainty and suspicion.

• This technique mirrors the uncertainties of real life. People often make erroneous judgments based on incomplete information. At the start of my flash piece Overdue, Marty assumes he’ll quickly find something he can pawn from a suburban house in a well-to-do neighborhood, but the outside doesn’t match what he finds on the inside.

How and When to Use Misdirection:

Utilize misdirection by introducing seemingly factual information which later proves deceptive, paving the way for shocking plot twists that captivate and surprise your audience. This can be done through:

• Characters’ Secret Pasts: Clues of a character’s past can seem innocent until pieced together for a bigger reveal later that exposes their secrets. For example, Dr. Armstrong presented as a trustworthy doctor. His claim of not knowing a patient was a lie (though the reader doesn’t know this yet): “The name meant nothing to me when it was spoken. What was it Clees? Close? I really can’t remember having a patient of that name, or being connected with a death in any way.” It wasn’t until people were picked off one by one by an unidentified murderer that the survivors confronted him, and his deception was revealed, leading to a tense scene where his past failures were exposed. (And Then There Were None).

• Setting: Consider how you can use the expectations of a setting and flip them upside down. “Marty crept toward the two-story cookie-cutter house in the quiet cul-de-sac... Rumors had painted the residents as well-off... he needed the extra cash rich people left out—a purse on a table, a coin jar on the counter...” The reader, like Marty, encounters anything but the norm they presumed: 

Entering the dining room, Marty’s heart sank. A handwritten grocery list lay abandoned on the table, shoved aside a stack of bills stamped ‘overdue’ in violent red ink. The familiarity hit him like a gut-punch. They were trying to survive. (Overdue).

• Unreliable (or biased) Narrators: In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carroway, though not entirely “unreliable,” idealizes Gatsby, focusing on his dreams and aspirations while glossing over his flaws and the moral decay. Because we only see the story through his biased perspective, readers are misled regarding Gatsby’s true nature, such as his involvement in illegal activities and his obsession with Daisy. 

• Subplot: A subplot that distracts from the main conflict can create an excellent ruse. For example, in Lest She Forget, a mysterious visitor arrives, leaving the protagonist unsure whether he’s there to protect or harm. What’s more, there’s an underlying attraction between them, hinting at a possible past relationship. This thread keeps the reader guessing about their true connection and adds to the protagonist’s confusion. The reader is left to wonder whether this subplot is part of the major conflict or something else, and leads to a surprising discovery.

Red Herrings: Red herrings are misleading elements that divert readers by suggesting something through foreshadowing or clues about a character’s intentions, goals, or traits, ultimately revealing all is not what it seems.

• In Christie’s book, we question Dr. Armstrong’s innocence when we discover the poor choices in his past. When Captain Phillips is accused, readers are distracted and pointed away from the true killer.

• In Malice’s book, several women died during the blizzard, and we suspect a cover-up regarding the protagonist’s survival, though the motives remain unclear. The mysterious visitor could be friend or foe, and the protagonist must rely on her gut instincts for survival. All these point us away from the truth and further into the protagonist’s confusion and terror. 

• A subtler red herring in Fitzgerald’s book, is Gatsby’s wealth: the focus on this and his extravagant parties detract the reader from what he’s really after (Daisy) and the illicit origins of his fortune.

• At the start of my flash piece, readers might perceive Marty as a typical burglar, but when he breaks into the house, he’s confronted with his own traumatic past and a startling revelation about the family he’d planned to rob.

• Omission: What’s said is often as important as what’s left unspoken. Consider what a narrator leaves out, or what a character fails to notice. By the time you drop your plot twist, your readers won’t have seen it coming, but it should still ring true. When Nick tells Gatsby, “I thought you inherited your money,” Gatsby replies that he’d lost most of it in the panic of the war, then adds nonchalantly that he’s been in several things and changes the subject: “‘Do you mean you’ve been thinking over what I proposed the other night?’ Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.” The reader is immediately drawn to Daisy, and we’ve forgotten all about Gatsby and his “business affairs.”

Lookout! 👀

Be on the lookout for signs of misdirection (through red herrings, omissions, secrets, etc) in your favorite movies and books. Consider how the author (or director) accomplished the use of this device. Was it effective? What hooked you and made you turn the page or keep watching? How can your understanding of what they did help you accomplish the same?

Prompt 📝

Write a scene where your protagonist is misled by another’s actions. The actions could suggest this secondary character is heroic or villainous, then twist this so the protagonist realizes the character is the opposite of what they initially believed. The reveal should be surprising but believable, stemming from a misunderstanding rather than an implausible shock.

Further Reading: 📚

• https://literarydevices.net/red-herring/

• https://literarydevices.net/ad-hominem/

• https://authorspathway.com/writing-process/writing/the-power-of-the-unspoken-how-omission-creates-tension-and-subtext/

• https://writershelpingwriters.net/2023/01/build-suspense-with-secrets/

Twists and Reveals: The Art of Keeping Your Readers Guessing

By Claire Cooper

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An interesting plot and intriguing characters are key ingredients to keep readers turning the pages of any work of fiction. But if you’re writing thrillers, crime, mysteries, or suspense, twists and reveals can be the secret sauce that turns a good story into a great one.

The two terms are often used interchangeably, but twists and reveals are quite different things. What are they? How do you construct them? And most importantly of all, what needs to be in place for them to work well?

The difference between twists and reveals

A reveal is just what it sounds like—new information that answers an important question. 

It might be the central question of the plot (who’s the killer?). Or it could be a nugget that brings the reader closer to solving the mystery (that dodgy guy who’s been stalking our heroine is her long-lost brother).

A reveal is essential to any whodunnit. Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party is a classic example—there’s a cast of characters, one of whom is the murderer. The set-up has readers poring over every word, searching for clues to the killer’s identity. When it comes, the reveal is beautifully satisfying.

And while that happens at the end of the story, there are other, smaller reveals along the way. They keep things interesting, provide clues, and allow the reader to form theories about what’s happening. 

Like reveals, twists also impart information—but that’s not all. That information turns everything the reader previously thought they knew on its head.

That creates an exciting reading experience. And it also means readers will recommend your book to all their friends, because they’ll be desperate for other people to talk to about it.

Gone Girl is perhaps the most famous example of a twist in a modern psychological thriller. At the start, it reads as a well-written but conventional mystery: a woman has gone missing, her husband is under suspicion. Has he killed her?

But halfway through, we’re presented with new and shocking information. Everything we thought we knew was wrong. And we’re faced with a different set of questions to keep us reading.

Twists appear in classic crime, too. Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral has one of the most brilliantly constructed twists I’ve ever read. No spoilers: if you haven’t read it, put that right ASAP.

What is it that makes some twists and reveals work so well? And what goes wrong when they fall flat?

Writing a great reveal

Both twists and reveals play on the contract between author and reader. Some people refer to this as the “story promise,” the set-up that tells the reader what to expect if they decide to read the book.

Reveals honor that promise. Twists are an unexpected bonus (although the prevalence of twists in modern fiction means they’re not always unexpected—more on that later).

The reveal in The Hunting Party works so well because it offers readers exactly what they wanted when they started reading the book: they find out who the killer is.

Other reveals along the way answer some questions while posing others, keeping the tension high throughout. At the end, everything is resolved—and crucially, it fits together and makes sense.

That logic is essential. Part of the delight of reading a whodunnit is trying to work out the answer for ourselves. With the best books we fail, whilst knowing we could have succeeded, if only we’d spotted all the clues.

When a reveal goes wrong

When reveals fall flat, on the other hand, it’s often because new information comes out of the blue. There’s no way a reader could have worked it out. And there’s no pay-off for our concentration because nothing we’ve read until that point is relevant. We feel cheated.

The same goes for a reveal that feels implausible. While it could happen in real life, it feels too unlikely to be satisfying. It doesn’t fit comfortably with the world as it’s presented in the book.

Classic reveal fails can be guilty of one or both of these sins. Revealing that a character has an identical twin, say, or that a huge chunk of plot has been a dream—both feel like the author isn’t taking us seriously.

Yes, we know that identical twins exist; and yes, people dream. But if we haven’t been given any clues about what’s going on, the author has essentially been wasting our time. And even if the clues have been seeded, it’s hard to feel that the writer hasn’t taken an easy way out. 

The key to a successful twist

The same rules apply to a twist. It has to make sense. It has to be plausible. And it has to tie into what’s been presented before.

But with the twist, that final criterion is especially difficult to pull off. As writers, we need to lead our readers in the wrong direction, while still playing fair. Our characters can say things that aren’t true—they can be unreliable narrators. But we ourselves can never lie.

In Gone Girl, the twist is set up by the way we’re persuaded to think about the two main characters. One character reveals they’re lying to the police—they must have something to hide. We hear from the other in a context that makes it seem impossible that they’re lying.

That belief colors our interpretation of everything else. When it’s flipped on its head, we realize all our preconceptions are wrong.

The twist here works at a meta level, too. It changes our whole perception of the kind of book we’re reading. The story promise we thought we were being presented with at the beginning is something else entirely. 

That’s a risky approach. But with Gone Girl, it works because it’s so exciting. You thought you were getting something good—but you’re getting something even better.

With Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral, the twist is set up so subtly you don’t notice it’s been done. Not only are we misdirected, we congratulate ourselves for having worked something out for ourselves. What we don’t discover until right at the end is that we got it completely wrong. 

And Christie achieves that while only presenting us with the facts of the story. It’s a masterclass in misdirection.

The role of planning in constructing your twist or reveal

I’d argue that planning is essential to constructing both twists and reveals—even if, for pantsers, it only kicks in at the editing stage.

That planning starts with a clear story promise, the question that will be answered by the end of the book. That gives you the substance for your big reveal. 

To get there, there’ll be other questions that need to be answered. And those mini-reveals should pose new questions, too.

Also crucial is to decide what to reveal when. A good rule of thumb is to release important information at the last possible moment, only when readers need it to make sense of what happens next. Reveal it too soon, and suspense will leak away.

If you’re including a twist, you need to walk a tightrope. On one hand, your reader needs enough information that the twist will make perfect sense. On the other hand, you need to disguise that information in a way that doesn’t allow your reader to spot what’s coming.

There are lots of different ways you can do that. Here are a few:

• Have a character tell the truth, but make them appear so untrustworthy that your reader won’t believe them

• Have a character who lies but appears honest 

• Include red herrings

• Slip out crucial facts alongside revelations that appear more important, so your reader focuses on the wrong thing.

Finally, think about where you want your twist to appear. The only rule here is not to have it happen too soon: you need your reader to have developed a clear (and wrong) idea of what they think is happening for it to have real impact. 

The role of the twist in book marketing

Once upon a time, a twist was a relatively rare thing. These days, in genres like psychological thrillers, it’s almost expected. 

That presents some challenges. If readers suspect a twist is coming, they’ll be on their guard. And some people complain that blurbs mentioning a twist distract them from the story, diverting their attention to trying to spot it. 

It’s a fair point. But it’s also true that a great twist can be the thing that gets readers talking about a book. That, of course, means more sales—and what marketing department or indie author can afford to ignore that?

If savvy readers looking out for a twist are wise to the usual tactics, it’s up to us as authors to respond. Either we find ways to execute those tactics so brilliantly that we still bamboozle our readers, or we come up with new tactics altogether.

That’s pretty daunting—but it’s exciting too. I for one can’t wait for the next book with a “mind-blowing twist!”

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Claire Cooper grew up in a small village in Wales before moving to London as a student. She was a civil servant for 17 years, but hung up her bowler hat when she discovered that she much preferred writing about psychotic killers to Ministerial speeches. She lives in London with her husband and a pond full of very cute newts, and also writes as C. J. Cooper. Her latest book, "The Elevator" is set in New York, Bristol and London, and includes lots of reveals (and maybe one or two twists!). It was published on August 25th.