: Re: Rules of Misdirection in Stories I am wondering if there are any rules for misdirection like how would you tell if a misdirection was done right or wrong in a story? Are there do's and don'ts

@Sue2132873

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Robert Heinlein said ‘the best way to lie is to tell the truth so no one believes you.‘

I think this applies to foreshadowing in storytelling. If you can foreshadow what is going to happen in your story, but the form and structure ensures that it will be taken out of context and misconstrued, then you have a wonderful misdirection that will hold up at the end of the story.

As far as rules of misdirection,

Only unreliable narrators can lie so by contrast your reliable narrator can never deliberately mislead the reader. They can be wrong and make mistakes, but that means the narrators discovery of their error needs to coincide with the discovery of the truth. I think this is difficult to do with out it feeling like a cheat.

You can as much misdirection in your story as you want as long as it doesn’t interfere with telling the story.

The best misdirects are the small aside events in a story that be confused with revealing character or establishing setting and scene.

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