Forgotten writing term…

Working through my Holly Lisle course, and it reminded me of a writing term I used to know, “MacGuffin“.  It is an item or device that usually the protagonist and possibly antagonist want, perhaps even fight over, that has no intrinsic or thematic value of its own, but moves the story and the characters to action.

As in, “Every single prop, invention, and even the island of  the TV show ‘Lost’ were all just MacGuffin’s.”

Hitchcock named it, he’s the bomb.

In case you can’t tell, MacGuffins piss me off.