Pre - Production: Subplots and Red Herring

In my film, I need a red herring(s) and subplots to give my film more depth and substance. I want to make every character look suspicious therefore creating a few red herrings but still making them all have a reason behind what they do.

''A red herring is a clue that takes the reader and/or characters in the wrong direction.''

A good red herring should weave easily into the details of the story. For example, in Legally Blonde, Reese Witherspoon’s character Elle Woods is working a trial defending Brooke Wyndham, who is accused of killing her husband. She can’t give an alibi, and her stepdaughter has told an eyewitness account of Brooke standing over the dead body with gun in hand, so it looks pretty bad for Brooke. However, when Elle goes to see Brooke on a solo prison visit, Brooke (a commercial fitness guru) reveals that on the day of the murder, she was having liposuction. This information would destroy her career if it got out, so she chooses to keep mum, even though she has an alibi for the murder.

https://thewritepractice.com/red-herring/

I need to make sure my red herring makes the audience think someone is the stalker but also is resolved or the audience will be annoyed if someone completely different ends up being the stalker.

''A Red Herring is something in a story that has no relevance to the story, except to make the audience wonder where it might fit into the plot later. Sometimes, the audience might not even notice it except as some background item or back-story, but usually it's predominant enough to make the viewer/reader think that it has something to do with solving the puzzle that will be revealed in time.''

Here are the red herrings and motives of my characters:

Daniel McCarther: 

Daniel is one of the main red herrings in the story. Daniel is lurking around the theatre and causes Bethany and the audience to think he is stalking her due to him taking photographs of her and then she connects the photographs that she receives of herself back to Daniel. It is later resolved that Daniel is an agent who is looking for someone to star in a role in a West End musical 'Gypsy' as 'June'. 

George Young:

George is being off and sketchy with Bethany and Bethany later see's him receiving a package off someone that she later finds, it has contact information of her family in it. She also hears him on the phone talking to someone when he lied saying he was at work.

Lucy Tailor:

Lucy doesn't have too much of a red herring apart from the typical 'it might be someone you don't expect'. However, when Lucy was younger she was jealous of Bethany as she got all the attention as she loved to perform and her mother always tried to push her to succeed. However, I am the only one who knows this as I created the character profiles and backgrounds, therefore, I need to push for Lucy to somehow show that she has a motive of some kind.

I definitely need to work on the red herring as Daniel and George are the only two who have a motive right now.

I found an article online by Nancy Curteman about how to create a red herring. Here is what I learnt.

1. Choose an innocent character and give him a motive that makes him a strong suspect in the murder of a victim. Near the climax of the novel, reveal something that proves the character’s innocence. Maybe the victim was blackmailing the red herring character—strong motive. However, the red herring was in the drunk tank the night of the murder.

The character I have chosen for this is GEORGE. Towards the end everything comes to light and we find out what George's up to in a scene where he is walking to the show and expresses his love for Bethany, he pulls out a ring in his pocket. It all becomes clear when Lucy and George are talking in the theatre and Lucy asks if the family contact information was helpful that she gave him, which explains why they was together and clears up the fact George isn't cheating, along with hopefully the link about the contact information, the ring and the fact he is planning the wedding.

2. Put an innocent character at the scene of the crime. Maybe he had come to drop something off for a friend who lives across the street from the victim’s house and had parked for a moment in the victim’s driveway. A suspicious neighbor saw him pull out of the driveway. She wrote down his car license number. Bang! He is a suspect.

Once again, George is suspected by Bethany as she is in the wrong place at the wrong time and we immediately think he is up to something. 

''When adding red herrings, it’s important that they are logical not just plunked into the story with no explanation. Also, keep in mind their purpose is to make the mystery novel puzzle more challenging and exciting for the reader, not to simply trip him up.''

I have definitely tried to make the red herrings and suspects logical and i've made sure there is a reason behind each one of them which is resolved at the end.

Next, I wanted to look into subplots,

To create a motive for George to be the stalker (Bethany's boyfriend) I created a subplot that he is planning to propose to her. I wanted to write it so he is being sketchy and off with her, he is so involve with her that he hates lying to her, he just wants the best for her. I also planned for him to plan most of the wedding as a surprise. For this, he needs family contact information off someone close to Bethany - Lucy, her sister. I think this will make George look suspicious if he has a book full of pictures and contact information of Bethany's family hidden away.

I found an article that looks further into detail about subplots and raising the stakes. 

''I also skipped over several subplots in Veronica Mars that fill in Act Two with “lesser” stakes. Those stakes have do with her relationship with her boyfriend, her relationship with her father, and surviving her 10-year high school reunion.

In other words, the Act Two stakes might not always escalate from one scene to the next, as the scenes addressing the subplots might have different consequences apart from the main story conflict. However, within each of those subplots, the stakes did increase.

That is, the stakes with her boyfriend kept getting bigger. Ditto for her father and the reunion. The consequences for failing to “handle” those situations (or handle them well) increased.

More importantly for maintaining the overall tension of the story, the additional juggling necessary for those issues increased the pressure in the main story too. Especially as subplots are often where we can let our characters fail completely with no opportunity to “fix” the situation. ''

However, after a tutorial with Simon and reading this post about in subplots. I have decided to actually SHOW Lucy and George together, to make a subplot. Bethany will think that George is first of all maybe behind the story, but to make it even worse, she will think that George is cheating on her with her sister. This will make Bethany spiral even more and will also (hopefully) make the audience care about the story. I want to show the couple to be so in love that the audience won't want him to be cheating, I want the audience to be as confused as Bethany yet still be backing George and Bethany's relationship.