MacGuffins

John Travolta, Pulp Fiction, 1994

By ROZALIND DINEEN 

There is a suitcase in Pulp Fiction about which there is much ado, the contents of which we never discover. This is a MacGuffin ��� a plot device, an object or a person, that drives the action so completely that the thing itself becomes meaningless. The black statuette in The Maltese Faction; the plans for the airplane engine in The 39 Steps; and (I am so very sure you won���t know this one) Doug in The Hangover, these are all MacGuffins. It doesn���t matter what���s in the suitcase; the statuette isn���t that interesting, who cares what happened to Doug ��� the point, the film, the story is in the search they engender.

MacGuffin is also the name of a new publishing initiative from Manchester���s sprightly and frequently brilliant Comma Press. This MacGuffin is a website (���a digital publishing platform���) on which writers can upload their work ��� text, audio and all. It���s free to access, and pleasing to look at. You can browse through the stories using hashtags (or help other readers by adding them). Comma���s digital editor recently explained: ���a crime-fiction fan on a 20-minute bus ride in south London could search #20minutestories #crime #lambeth to find a story suited to her journey���. And if that���s what people wanted to do, they could indeed do that.

Here���s the killer: the analytics for each story on MacGuffin are also clearly displayed. This means that all the writers involved know how many people have read their story, where in the world they were when they read it, and how many of them read it all the way through to the end. A graph for each story shows where people stopped reading ��� the ���key drop-off points���.

A burgeoning author could find all this quite helpful. If you know that 79 per cent of all your readers can not get past the same paragraph without throwing their device across a crowded Berlin caf�� or just leaving it in the loo in Miami International Airport, this may inform your editing process. Having said that, I���m not sure I���ve ever encountered a writer who would give up on the 21 per cent who kept going.

Can art be improved by consensus and approval? Of course not ��� but a certain type of readable and saleable writing can. The point here is in the search for, rather than the contents of, the work. A true MacGuffin.  

I have my own list of ���drop off points���, by the way. There is one novel in particular, a novel that is about as successful as it is possible for a novel to be, which I have tried to read only about half a dozen times. When I get to the bit about the vase, something inside me rolls its eyes, and the book drops-off down the back of the sofa. Thankfully the author neither knew nor cared.