2b) Red herrings should be used sparingly, so they don't stink up the place.
Red Herring:
1. something intended to distract attention from the main issue; misleading clue or false trail.2. a smoked herring with a reddish color.
One of my biggest problems as GM is not giving direction. I hate hand-holding and rail-roading (very different techniques, but similar in other ways) so I tend to avoid offering choices shaded towards the plot. Some of my players have thus complained that, well, they don't know what they're "supposed to do next."
See, for me, I do what my character would do in their normal, daily life, unless that normal, daily life is shaken. "OK, in your dreams, your family was attacked by vampires. The alarm has awoken you. What do you do?"
On a regular basis, I'd get up and brush my teeth.
If the GM told me it was really disturbing, I'd call and check in, and let the plot unfold from there. Of course, because of my Unusual Background: Dream Teaching, I usually get dreams like that, so I'm not panicked at first...
With that in mind, it's very important for me to be careful about using red herrings. If I give very limited clues in the first place, I don't want to annoy my players by making them follow up on something that doesn't give them any information at all. So I plan to play with "pink herrings," and give my players more information.