The Mcguffin

 The rain is tapping on my window, and I am working on schoolwork. As a business student, I have the liberty of zoning out occasionally, thinking of anything and everything but financial institutions and capital. It's boring, yet fascinating. 

As I sit here in my dark office (I like to work in dim light), I wonder if there is a story I could write about business school. What kind of story would it be? 

I usually write action stories. Some day I plan to write a more literary story, just to try it, but as it stands I am enjoying these plot driven action shorts. I wonder if a story about business school would be compatible with an action format?

Who am I kidding? Of course it would. They literally took a historical conspiracy and made it into an action movie that doubles as a history lesson. National Treasure should not have worked, but it did. How did the writers pull it off? 

With a mcguffin.

All a mcguffin is, is a device that triggers the plot. National treasure used the declaration of independence as a mcguffin. The Lord of the Rings used a ring. Raiders of the Lost ark used the ark of the covenant. The Avengers used the tesseract. 

A  mcguffin is nothing more than the one thing all the characters want, and your conflict is centered on what the characters are willing to do to get it. Now, you don't have to use a mcguffin if you don't want to, but chances are that it is somewhat inherent in story telling. 

The current short I am writing is a stone age story about a hunter who has to rescue his family from cannibals. What's the mcguffin? It's the hunters family. The cannibals want them, the hunter wants them, and they go to great lengths to obtain them. 

So what would an action style story about business school use as a mcguffin?

I say, success. If you are in business, school, or business school, you are probably looking for success. 

So wrapping your story around two students who are competing to get a grade would make the grade the mcguffin. Wrapping your story around a student whose roomate steals his business idea is a mcguffin. Now you can come up with action oriented situations to put them in. A fistfight in the dorm room, or a car chase across campus, maybe even a public riot after rousing fellow business students. 

As for me, I have a mcguffin and an action based situation I am facing in real time. 

Study.