Do you know the term, MacGuffin?
It involves a secret or device that motivates in a story. It could
mean a briefcase in a crime drama or a diamond ring in a spy story.
The term came from a story of
passengers on a train who interrogate a fellow passenger carrying an odd-looking
package. The man says the package contains a MacGuffin which catches tigers in
the Scottish Highlands. When the others claim there are no tigers in the
Scottish Highlands, the fellow answers, "Well, then there's no MacGuffin.
See, it is nothing at all."
Alfred Hitchcock used the term for
a plot device. He liked the way a mysterious package builds suspense to
gain the audience's attention. Hitchcock recognized that an audience
anticipating a solution to a mystery will folow the story even if the intial
interest-grabber turns out to be irrelevant.
For George Lucas the MacGuffin needs power. He says, "The audience
should care about it as much as the fighting heroes and villains on screen.”
If one considers a MacGuffin the object
of everybody's search then rosebud in Citizen Cane or the
Maltesse falcon, and brief cases in Pulp Fiction fit
the definition. It includes Ronin and the mineral unobtainium in Avatar.
In Hugo, focus on a mysterious notebook taken from the
main characer and his struggle to retrieve it fits the notion of
MacGuffin.
Creative Write: Write a story with a MacGuffin. Bring it into play at the
beginning. See if it declines in importance as your character's struggles play
out. Will it return at the end of the story?
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