Favorite Plot Devices

What’s your favorite plot device? Maybe you like stories with a red herring thrown into the mystery? Or perhaps you like dramas with a convincing femme fatale?

One of my favorite plot elements is to run opposite characters into one another. Any situation where you can force two people who don’t really like one another to have to work together usually provides great tension. Everything from the characters in Pride and Prejudice to Star Wars use some element of throwing opposites at each other.

So what plot devices do you like to see? A talisman object in a quest, i.e. like Tolkien’s One Ring? Or maybe you prefer something more subtle, such as a film noir character who should be a bad guy, but does good things?