: Re: How to trick the reader into thinking they're following a redshirt instead of the protagonist? I'm currently planning a "magical girl" story, and I thought of an interesting way to start it,

@Gonzalez219

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+1, Wetcircuit, though I will disagree on the Buffy angle; she is right on the misdirection.
This is difficult to pull off. The way I would do it is a little "close up magic"; you have to write from the POV of the hero but still mislead the reader into thinking she is doing something DIFFERENT than what she is doing.
One way to do that is give her a phone and somebody to talk to, a partner or spouse.
Here is an outline of a conversation. On the phone she is complaining.

Hero: No, I can't find this guy anywhere. And I have to get home and start dinner, I can't do this all night.
Partner: Just stop and get some pizza on the way home.
Hero: I'm not feeding kids pizza every night, it isn't healthy.
Partner: Alright. Well try Baker street, that's on your way home.
Hero: We tried that last night, and you said you didn't trust that report anyway!
Partner: I know. Just try it again.
Hero: Whatever. What's the quickest way to Baker?
Partner: Um, let me check your phone. Oh. Take a right in the next alley, then three blocks to Baker.

Hero in the dark alley, disgusted by trash and litter and puddles of who-knows-what-that-is-but-it-doesn't-smell-like-water. She hears trash cans being rattled. In front of her, a dumpster shape-shifts into a monster.

Hero: What the hell are you doing in an alley?

The monster attacks. Hero mode.
The trick here (so you can tailor to your own story) is to make it seem like she is searching for a person, and frustrated by not being able to find him. You could do the same bit searching for an object.
As a superhero, she isn't afraid of the monster, she is just irritated that she can't find it, and she has a life to live.
In the alleyway we present things that stink and she finds disgusting, she doesn't want to be there, but still in her mind there is no monster because she thinks she has missed her chance. She is just taking a shortcut to Baker street. She doesn't even expect to find the monster in the alley.
But make sure if you go through it a second time knowing she is a superhero, you aren't cheating. She just wasn't thinking about being a superhero while talking to her partner on the phone, she was thinking about her domestic life. Because killing monsters is routine for her, she doesn't really have to think about it.

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