: 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,

@Angela458

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In movies, many "redshirt" scenes like this avoid showing the redshirt's death clearly. You can use this to your advantage.

Here is what I suggest you do: follow the cliche exactly. Then subvert it after the readers/audience have forgotten about it.

Let me give you a summary of how I would write this:

So, here is the way these scenes typically play out. We see the red shirt running from something. They are running so fast that the camera is shaky, we can hardly see anything. What could they be running from? The red shirt looks behind them. They slow down. The monster is no where in sight. The red shirt relaxes, collapsing onto the ground, catching her breath. We see the monster slowly creep up behind them with out their knowledge. The red shirt turns around, and then the camera pans up to a shot of the sky, or the moon etc. And we only hear the screams, we don't see anything.

Then, we introduce a fake main character. "Sherlock". This faux main character heard that someone went missing, and heard reports of screams in the area. Sherlock investigates this for a long time, maybe he hears rumors of these monsters.

After some time. The Sherlock character finds the monster, but its not what he expected. The monster is dead, bloodied, its arms have been ripped clean out of its sockets, etc.

Who could have done this? Sherlock hears rumors of an even greater monster. A monster that eats that other monster for breakfast. Sherlock finally gets close to this monster's lair, and the monster attacks him! Sherlock is completely unprepared for this, and is inches away from dying. But at the last second, the red shirt jumps onto the monsters back, and rips its arms out of its sockets. We now see that when these monsters are in pain, they scream like humans, explaining the beginning. It was the red shirt who killed the first monster all along.

Give your audience enough room to forget about the beginning Thats the only way to have them feel pleasantly surprised.

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