Need to get the action moving? Try a MacGuffin

Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

If I’ve forgotten it by the third act, it’s probably a MacGuffin.

A MacGuffin isn’t a breakfast sandwich served at your favorite fast food emporium. It’s a plot device, and you’ve probably seen dozens of them — even if you didn’t realize it.

Alfred Hitchcock, who was first to use the term in 1939, described the MacGuffin thusly: "The MacGuffin is the thing that the spies are after, but the audience don't care."

His old friend Merriam (Merriam-Webster, that is) used somewhat better grammar, defining a MacGuffin as “an object, event or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.”

In fact, some experts see the lack of intrinsic value as one of the tests of a true MacGuffin, but it doesn’t really matter. As Hitch said, “The audience don’t care.”

The stuff that stories are made of

Usually introduced in the first act, the MacGuffin is the thing that sets the plot in motion and keeps the heroes and villains on the run, chasing after it and each other. That’s its real value — not its weight in gold, the jewels it's covered with or whatever.

One of the best known MacGuffins, “The Maltese Falcon,” is said by Kasper Gutman to be encrusted with jewels, but we never see any. When the statuette, or “dingus” as Sam Spade calls it, finally shows up in the movie version of Dashiell Hammett’s book, it’s acquired a coat of black enamel, but it looks smooth as a baby’s bottom under that paint.

So much for the jewels.

An early example occurs in Hitchcock’s 1935 film “The 39 Steps,” in which the MacGuffin isn’t an object at all but a secret — a network of spies. Or is it the stolen plans for a silent airplane engine? Who can remember? At any rate, it’s not important as long as the cops chase Robert Donat all over that Scottish countryside.

In Orson Welles’ classic “Citizen Kane,” the MacGuffin is ostensibly the meaning of Kane’s dying word: “rosebud.” But the real search is for something else: the answer to who this very public man, Charles Foster Kane, really was.

Putting that MacGuffin to work

In my book “Lion Taming, Dating and Other Dangerous Endeavors,” I employ the use of a MacGuffin in at least three stories (maybe more if you fudge a bit).

In “Whitefish,” it’s the Golden Carousel, the stolen object for which gumshoe Roscoe “Gat” Tallow is searching. In “Sweet Dreams Are Made of Cheese,” Jacques and Lorraine are after the Roquefort, and the reunited classmates in “Their Old School” are hunting a stolen necklace.

My stories don’t always follow all the rules for a MacGuffin. For instance, the MacGuffin is traditionally introduced in the first act. I mention the MacGuffin near the beginning of “Sweet Dreams Are Made of Cheese,” but it doesn’t pop up until the second act of “Whitefish,” and it’s only hinted at before the third act of “Their Old School.”

But, in each case, it does its job of giving the principles something to focus on and keeping the story moving.

In another change from the norm, the MacGuffins in my stories remain important until the very end rather than fading into obscurity with a possible comeback at the climax.

Other MacGuffins in folklore, literature and the movies:

• The Holy Grail of Arthurian legend, perhaps the earliest known MacGuffin, far precedes the coining of the term.

• The One Ring in Tolkien's “Lord of the Rings” is a classic example of the “sticky MacGuffin.” The hero’s quest to get rid of the object moves the plot along.

• Decoding devices, including the Lektor in “From Russia With Love” and the ATAC in “For Your Eyes Only,” show up as MacGuffins in more than one James Bond adventure.

• The Ark of the Covenant in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” may be the best known modern movie MacGuffin. Filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas appropriately borrowed this tried-and-true plot device for their homage to Saturday-matinee movie serials.

• In Lawrence Block’s “The Burglar in the Library,” Bernie Rhodenbarr is after a valuable first edition, inscribed by Raymond Chandler to Dashiell Hammett, in a nod to stories like “The High Window” and “The Maltese Falcon.”

• Baby Yoda, or the Child, if you prefer, from “The Mandalorian” could just as well be called the MacGuffin.

MacGuffins work because, like a body in the library or a stolen death ray, they send a signal to the audience — buckle your seatbelt because the race is on. There may be some twists and turns along the way, but we’re not stopping until we get to the finish line.