Soo...what's the definition of mcguffin?
Mine is easy to write. Just boring. Maybe this weekend I'll write her a week or so worth of entries and then go back to my "real" story.
Right now they're chatting with a depressed nearsighted dragon. Fun times, fun times.
A MacGuffin is a plot device that holds no meaning or purpose of its own except to motivate the characters and advance the story. The device is usually used in films, especially thrillers. The term "MacGuffin" was invented by Alfred Hitchcock, who made extensive use of MacGuffins in his films.
One example of a MacGuffin in Hitchcock's movies is the bottle of "radioactive diamonds" in Notorious: it is the reason the story takes place, but it otherwise means nothing. The story could just as easily have used "uranium" (originally meant as the contents of the bottle), gold or extraordinary rare wine as the plot device.
The best Hitchcock MacGuffin is considered by film scholars to be the one used in North by Northwest. In this movie, the MacGuffin is the character of "George Kaplan", who is being chased by the enemy spies. Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for Kaplan by the spies, and so they chase him instead. Thornhill spends the course of the movie trying to find George Kaplan himself without realizing that George Kaplan does not even exist. Both the hero and the villains of the movie are chasing nothing more than a puff of hot air, making this a true MacGuffin.