What is a red herring in writing?
a red herring is something the writer puts in the story to sort of distract from something more important or relevant. a very simple example to imagine this would be in crime shows where all evidence leads to a certain suspect being guilty but then someone else you wouldn’t have suspected turns out to be the murderer that certain clues pointed at but you were too distracted to notice. the clues pointing towards the first (innocent) person being guilty would be red herrings.
or like remember iron man 3 (spoiler alert idk if youve seen it x)) and how everyone thought that bearded guy was gonna be the villain but then he turns out to be a paid actor and a babbling fool, and the real villain is the dude from the beginning of the movie? also a red herring
i guess it can be anything done in any way that distracts the reader/audience from realising the truth at first.