Red Herring
- “where does red herring come from”
- “is the red herring dog story true”
- “red herring vs macguffin”
- “red herring fallacy”
:: COMPARE ::
Red herringvsMacGuffin
The short answer
A red herring misleads the audience and can be removed without collapsing anything. A MacGuffin misleads nobody — everyone knows it's a pretext — but it cannot be removed, because the entire plot is people chasing it.
Side by side
| Aspect | Red herring | MacGuffin |
|---|---|---|
| Misleads | The audience | Nobody |
| Load-bearing | No | Yes |
| Matters in itself | Seems to | Doesn't |
| Removable | Yes | No |
| Drives the plot | No | Yes |
| Misleads audience | Yes | No |
| Can be removed | Yes | No |
| Characters care | Incidentally | Enormously |
Which one you meant
Readers who land here meaning Red Herring rather than MacGuffin are usually searching for phrases like “where does red herring come from”, “is the red herring dog story true”, “red herring vs macguffin”.
MacGuffin
- “what is a macguffin”
- “macguffin vs red herring”
- “did hitchcock invent macguffin”
- “macguffin examples”
Which came first
Red herring. 1807 — William Cobbett tells the hound-distracting story in his Political Register, popularising the figurative use — and possibly inventing the anecdote.
- 1807Red HerringWilliam Cobbett tells the hound-distracting story in his Political Register, popularising the figurative use — and possibly inventing the anecdote.
- 1939MacGuffinHitchcock explains the MacGuffin in a Columbia University lecture, using the Scottish train anecdote.
Where the confusion comes from
“A MacGuffin is a red herring.”
A MacGuffin motivates the characters and is structurally load-bearing — remove it and there's no plot. A red herring exists to mislead the audience and can be cut without consequence. They're near-opposites.
Read either one in full