Plot Devices: Propelling Your Story

Whether you’re a “panster” with a predisposition to write your way straight into a sagging middle or a “plotter” who struggles to get the beats just right so you can sit down and write already, having a firm command of plot devices can be the game changer you need to craft storylines with strong pacing as well as captivating texture and dimension. Today, we’re going to talk about Inciting Incidents, MacGuffins, and Cliffhangers. These terms describe writing devices that manipulate the movement of a story and can compel the reader to turn the page.

The Inciting Incident

Notice that I took the ‘s’ off incidents. The inciting incident is the singular event that sets a story’s plot in motion. It doesn’t matter if it’s flash fiction or War and Peace, every story has only one inciting incident. In today’s “tick-tock attention span” market, the inciting incident ideally happens as early as possible in the story. Older books push it back as far as the ten to fifteen percent mark, but in the current landscape, literary gatekeepers like to see it before the five percent mark. Sometimes a subtle change to the unfolding narrative, the inciting incident frequently adheres to the butterfly effect; an element of the story is set alight on the wings of a butterfly and triggers a hurricane. The not-so-secret formula of a great inciting incident is hooking the reader using mystery and suspense as the bait. Here are some standout examples:

In The Hobbit (one of those older books that pushes the inciting incident WAY back), Bilbo Baggins agreeing to leave the safety of the shire to be the burglar of the dwarves’ company despite the risk of death sets the story in motion. That is the inciting incident.

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the inciting incident is Harry receiving an invitation to attend Hogwarts because unbeknownst to him, he is a wizard.

In The Martian, the inciting incident is when Mark Watney is left for dead on Mars when he’s still very much alive.

MacGuffins

A MacGuffin is an object or an event that propels the plot despite being otherwise irrelevant to the story. Not all stories have a MacGuffin, but MacGuffins are a powerful device for continuous forward momentum and intrigue.

Revisiting Tolkien, in The Lord of the Rings, the ring is a MacGuffin. Even though it’s just a thing in the backdrop, it is the reason for the quest. The mere presence of the ring creates stakes and tension even though it’s tangential to the story.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort’s horcruxes are MacGuffins. Their sole purpose is to enable Harry to defeat Voldemort, and though they are a propulsive piece of the plot, the quest to destroy those objects is more important than the horcruxes themselves.

Though this next one comes from a movie, it is arguably the funniest and most absurd MacGuffin ever conceived, and it’s an example of how an event can be the MacGuffin. In The Big Lebowski, a strongman peeing on the rug of the wrong Lebowski is the MacGuffin. The wrong Lebowski is a Nihilist who’s down on his luck, and dammit, he wants someone to pay for that carpet. One might say the rug is the MacGuffin, but it’s the act of peeing on it that sets the story in motion. In this example, the inciting incident and the MacGuffin are the same. As we move through these fundamental plot devices, you’ll see several instances of overlap.

Cliffhangers

When a chapter, story, or novel ends with an unknown or unexpected outcome to a high-stakes scene, that is an invocation of the cliffhanger.

Fourth Wing and Harry Potter spoilers ahead, plus a spoiler for chapter thirteen of Andy Weir’s The Martian. (I’m trying to limit these to just a few books you’re likely to have already read.)

Rowling uses a cliffhanger at the end of chapter seventeen of The Prisoner of Azkaban, to expose a villainous wizard who had been hiding in plain sight as a red herring, or in this case, a rat.

“That’s not a rat,” croaked Sirius Black suddenly.
“What d’you mean — of course he’s a rat —”
“No, he’s not,” said Lupin quietly. “He’s a wizard.”
“An Animagus,” said Black, “by the name of Peter Pettigrew.”

At this point in the story, the reader has known this rat as the pet of Harry’s best friend, Ron. So of course, they are going to be turning the page to figure out how that went unnoticed for so long.

In The Martian, Andy Weir ends chapter thirteen with a sandstorm that cracks the face plate on the protagonist’s space suit and rips the airlock from the hab. Trapped in the airlock, the protagonist removes his damaged face mask, and the chapter ends with him hearing the hissing sound of air escaping from the airlock. Who’s gonna put the book down at that point to see what happens later? Not me.

When Yarros’s protagonist, Violet, is gravely injured in an attack at the end of Fourth Wing, her enemy/lover/enemy takes her to the only person who can save her, Violet’s brother whom she believes is dead. The Fourth Wing ends with her not-dead-after-all brother walking into the room and saying, “Welcome to the revolution.” I wasn’t a huge fan of The Fourth Wing. It was fine, but my TBR pile is a towering monolith so as I neared the end, I wasn’t planning on reading the sequel…until I read the last line. That’s the power of a good cliffhanger.

Conclusion

Plot devices are valuable tools for setting a compelling story in motion and then turning a linear path into one that twists and turns to keep the reader guessing or circling back to surprise the reader by elevating a small detail to a new height. As you can see from the examples, sometimes these devices overlap. They play together well. The key to using them effectively is to recognize how plotting methods work and to experiment with adding them in new ways to shift the momentum of a developing story in a direction that captures your reader and makes them think, Alright, just one more chapter.