What in God's Name is a Macguffin and Why Would I be in search of it?

A Macguffin is something which appears to be of the utmost importance and can eventually turn out to be trivial. Something which initially seems to be the whole reason for another activity can be subsumed by that subsequent activity and almost forgotten. The initial something is a MacGuffin.

Eh?

Well, it's the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, it's the microfilm the spies are after, it's the wallet and someone goes looking for and ends up inadvertently finds their long lost father - the wallet then becomes 'The MacGuffin'.

Look at the stories you have already written - I'll bet that some of them have MacGuffin's in there.

But I still don't understand! What is it?
Well, the MacGuffin came from a joke:
It's a story about two men in a train. One man says, “What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?”
And the other answers, “Oh, that’s the MacGuffin.”
The first one asks, “What’s a MacGuffin?”
”Well,” the other man says, “it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.”
The first man says, “But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,” and the other one answers, “Well then, that’s no MacGuffin!”

Need more? Then click here for the lowdown from the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock (no - really!).

Magazine editors are: Adam Maxwell, James Whitman, Rosalind Wyllie, Stuart Wheatman, Dave Peat and Stephen Schieber
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