This tip really should have been placed right after the one dealing with WHAT IF? because when I write a thriller, coming up with the McGuffin is what comes next. It is not an easy concept to grasp, and I would recommend you Google “McGuffin” if things aren’t clear to you. But let me give it a try.
Most people read a thriller thinking they are reading it to find out what happens at the end—the explanation for what is going on in the story. “Oh, they wanted to steal nuclear secrets and rule the world!”……”Oh, they want to give plastic surgery to a killer and have him replace the vice president!”
The truth is, whether readers are aware of it or not, most of the time, they keep reading a book because they have been led to care about the characters and what happens to them. The explanation at the end of what’s going on—the McGuffin—is sort of a throw-in that most of the time could be any number of things.
Alfred Hitchcock is credited with coining the phrase, and the example most often used to illustrate the concept is NORTH BY NORTHWEST, Hitchcock’s 1959 masterpiece in which, through a case of mistaken identity, baddies are trying to kill Cary Grant. The reason they are trying to kill him is that he knows something. What he knows is immaterial—the McGuffin. It could be any of a thousand things, as long as it “fits” the plot. In fact, the notion of mistaken identity is something of a McGuffin as well. The bad guys could know that Grant’s brother was a spy who could have given Grant nuclear secrets— something like that. Get it?
I often say that the McGuffin is something you need to figure out before you can start writing your book, but once you have it, you can set it aside and go ahead with the writing. In THE FIFTH VIAL, protagonist Natalie Reyes has her lung stolen on a trip to Rio.
Many other things happen in the book, but eventually we learn about a secret society of surgeons using the philosophy of Plato to justify the “redistribution” of organs. That is the McGuffin. Given the assignment, I could come with any number of explanations for why Natalie has her lung stolen, and the story would change very little.
So first I decide what I want to write about. Next I formulate a What If? question. And then, before deciding who the protagonist will be, I explain the What If? with a McGuffin. If I need to, during the writing, I can change the McGuffin to a different one. There are no rules here except that it is preferable not to begin writing the book without one.
One last example: In my book EXTREME MEASURES, a drug that makes a person look dead when they’re not is used to remove homeless people from society. The reason they are being removed (to develop a universal antibiotic) is the McGuffin. It could have been that a warlord wanted to create a zombie army and conquer the world, but I think you’ll agree that is one McGuffin best left crumpled up on the writing room floor.
