Being a Good Magician

Making a Smooth Magic Show

Once you have just two tricks, you have enough for a magic show. Once you have finished your first trick you need something a little bit better to say than 'and now for my next trick'; that is not being a good magician. You need what is called a segue (pronounced seg-way). The segue can be described as a linking thought between one trick to the next.

Say for example you have just done a card trick and your next trick is a coin trick, you could say something like this: 'aren't card tricks amazing? I would pay a lot of money to see a REALLY GOOD card trick. Speaking of money, look at this coin here....' See how you can smoothly flow from the card trick into the coin trick which is so much better than saying 'and now for my next trick'.

You can say that if you were to make it a funny. Try this line: 'and now for my next trick which is one of the classics of magic, commonly called (PAUSE HERE) one of the classics of magic! If you say it with a big smile on your face and a small nod of your head at the end, people will know that you are not serious and they get a little laugh from it. You have just been a good magician, you have smoothly made the jump from one trick to the next.

A very funny magician named Billy McComb had a very good visual gag that he could use to get between any of his tricks. He would start off with a small sign on his table that said $25 Trick. He would then introduce the trick as his $25 trick and it will be for sale afterwards. After the trick he would say to the audience, 'what? you didn't like that?, well how about a $10 trick?'. He would do his next trick and say to the audience again, 'What?, you didn't like that either? How about a $5 trick?' This would go on to $2.50 then finally the punch line was he had a sign that said FREE. The audience got to expect this joke between the tricks and enjoyed the bits between the tricks just as much as the tricks themselves.

Another way to link phases of your routines is by progression. By that I mean making each subsequent phase faster, or slower, or bigger or smaller or....???

Take Paul Gertner's "That's Ridiculous." He produces a series of coins, each one being larger than the previous one. Paper Balls Over The Head works because the loads get bigger and bigger. It usually starts with one crushed napkin vanishing and ending with a whole packet of napkins vanishing. Had it just been the one napkin vanished five times in a row then the effect wouldn't be anywhere near as strong as the when the size increases and increases.

To read more about thses ideas check out Datwin Ortiz's classic book Strong Magic . It is one of my all time favourite magic books.

More tips for being a good magician back at Julian's Magician School

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