Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The use of a MacGuffin as a plot device predates the name MacGuffin. The Holy Grail of Arthurian legend has been cited as an early example of a MacGuffin. The Holy Grail is the desired object that is essential to initiate and advance the plot, but the final disposition of the Grail is never revealed, suggesting that the object is not of significance in itself. [8]
Name Definition Example Setting as a form of symbolism or allegory: The setting is both the time and geographic location within a narrative or within a work of fiction; sometimes, storytellers use the setting as a way to represent deeper ideas, reflect characters' emotions, or encourage the audience to make certain connections that add complexity to how the story may be interpreted.
A plot device or plot mechanism [1] is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward. [2] A clichéd plot device may annoy the reader and a contrived or arbitrary device may confuse the reader, causing a loss of the suspension of disbelief. However, a well-crafted plot device, or one that emerges naturally from the setting or ...
Deus ex machina in Euripides' Medea, performed in 2009 in Syracuse, Italy; the sun god sends a golden chariot to rescue Medea.. Deus ex machina (/ ˌ d eɪ ə s ɛ k s ˈ m æ k ɪ n ə, ˈ m ɑː k-/ DAY-əs ex-MA(H)K-in-ə, [1] Latin: [ˈdɛ.ʊs ɛks ˈmaːkʰɪnaː]; plural: dei ex machina; 'God from the machine') [2] [3] is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is ...
The literary device of stories within a story dates back to a device known as a "frame story", where a supplemental story is used to help tell the main story. Typically, the outer story or "frame" does not have much matter, and most of the work consists of one or more complete stories told by one or more storytellers.
This film was one of the first to introduce the "MacGuffin" plot device, a term coined by the English screenwriter and Hitchcock collaborator Angus MacPhail. [104] The MacGuffin is an item or goal the protagonist is pursuing, one that otherwise has no narrative value; in The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans. [105]
Clayton Hamilton, in A Manual of The Art of Fiction (1918), stated that a proper plot outline is, "A plot, therefore, in its general aspects, may be figured as a complication followed by an explication, a tying followed by an untying, or (to say the same thing in French words which are perhaps more connotative) a nouement followed by a ...
Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; Contact us