Bare Bones: The Stray Force

Last week I was reminded of a trick I postered here a few years ago called Stray the Daisy. That was primarily a Valentine’s Day trick and it required at 8 outs, so it wasn’t the sort of thing I did regularly. Although the handful of times I did it, it was a fun trick and people dug it.

I decided to break out the basic idea from that trick and perform it this weekend and it again got a really good response, even though I performed it in a very bare bones way. Normally I would wait to publish a trick (usually in the books) until I had a presentation that I thought was particularly interesting in some way. But I thought it might be worthwhile to see the trick at this stage, and then maybe revisit it again in the future if/when I have a presentation I’ve come up with for it.

One thing I like about this is that it’s a completely hands off trick. Not just a little bit hands-off—you literally don’t need to touch anything at all. Technically you could do this over Zoom (but you’d have to send them the deck, and Zoom shows are gross, so you probably wouldn’t want to).

When I did this, I did touch the deck, but you could choose not to.

You need a marked deck in Si Stebbins order. I also used a little playing-card-sized envelope, although that’s not absolutely necessary.

When I did it this weekend, I started by giving the deck a quick false shuffle, and then did a rough spread on the table face-up. I have zero concern of someone noticing a red-black pattern in a face-up spread. Especially not a rough, uneven spread.

I scooped up the deck and had my friend take the deck under the table and cut it a few times, remove the top card and put it in the envelope. And put the envelope in his pocket. This all happened completely in his hands and under the table where no one could see.

I had him set the deck on the table and I told him we were going to try and see if the deck itself could help identify the card he cut to. (Again, that’s not a presentation I would use other than in the early stages of testing out a trick.)

I told him to cut off a small packet of card. And that he would remove cards individually from the packet he cut off. Tossing them to the table and alternating saying red-black-red-black. Whatever color he was on at the time the last card in his hand was reached, that would be the color we would go forward with. “Sort of like, ‘she loves me, she loves me not’ with flower petals.” (To be clear, he’s not naming the actual color of the cards in his hand. Those cards are face down. The cards are just being used as objects for the back and forth nature of the selection. They’re standing in for the flower petals.)

So he spread the cards in his hand a little a started plucking cards out individually. Red-black-red-black. The card he ended on was black.

He cut off another packet and did the process again with spades and clubs. (Ended on clubs)

Then picture/number. (Number)

Odd/Even (Even)

High/Low (Low)

So we were at a black, club, low, even, number card.

With the final packet he alternated between the Two of Clubs and the Four of Clubs, landing on the Four.

I made the point (as I had made on some of the previous packets) that if he had cut just one more or one less card in this packet, he would have ended up on the Two of Clubs rather than the Four.

So I recapped. He cut to any card and put it in an envelope in his pocket. Then, using the deck of cards and a random process he narrowed all the cards in a deck to the black cards, the clubs, the number clubs, the even number clubs, the low even number clubs, and finally the two of clubs. At any step of the way, a single card difference would have pushed us down a completely different path to a completely different card.

He removed the card from the envelope in his pocket and of course it matched.

You have the general idea on this already.

As I mentioned, the deck is marked and in Stebbins order so you know what card is in his pocket when the deck is brought back out. It’s going to be the one before (or after, depending on how you set up your deck) the card that’s currently on top of the deck.

Now it’s just a matter of “forcing” the outcome to match the card that’s in the envelope.

So you’re going to narrow down the cards in binary options, and force the outcome of each option. To do this, you just need to know if the spectator cuts off an odd or even number of cards each time.

So you look at the marking on the top card of the deck and notice if it’s a red or black card. Then, after they cut, you make note of the new top card’s color.

If the color of the original top card and the one they cut to are the same, then you have them start the “plucking of cards” elimination, on the option you don’t want them to end up with.

If the color of the original top card and the one they cut to are different, then you have them start the elimination procedure, on the option you do want them to end up with.

For example, the top two cards are the same color and you want to force the “low” option.

You: “Okay, now just pluck them one at a time from your hand, alternating between high and low. So toss one. High. Another. Low. And keep going like that until you have one card left.”

Them: “High, Low, High, Low, High… and the last one is Low.”

If the top two cards were different colors, that means they have an odd number, and so you’d have them start with the force option. “Low, High, Low, High… and this one is Low.”

For it to seem as fair as possible, you need to tell them how to count before they spread the cards in their hand. So it seems you can’t possibly know how many cards they hold. You may want to turn away while they cut the cards and then have them hold the cut off portion between their hands when you turn back.

Here are the binaries you would use. They’re pretty straightforward. There are only couple exceptions.

If they selected a J, Q, K

Red/Black - Suit A/Suit B - Number/Picture - Male/Female - Jack/King (if not a queen)

If they selected a 2-9

Red/Black - Suit A/Suit B - Number Picture - Odd/Even - High/Low - 1st Option/2nd Option

In this case High is “6 and above” and Low is “5 and below,” because the court cards were already ruled out.

If they selected a 10

Red/Black - 1st Suit/2nd Suit - High/Low - Number Picture - Odd/Even - 1st Option/2nd Option

In this case High is “7 and above” and Low is “6 and below,” because here the court cards are still seemingly in play.

The one value that I find hard to whittle my way down to in a natural way is the Ace. You could narrow them down to “cards with letters” (as opposed to cards with numbers). And then you could split them between the “higher value” letter cards and the “lower value” letter cards, and let them decide if the Ace is high (getting paired with the king for the next round) or low (pairing it with the jack). Giving them that choice is a nice additional bit of freedom. Although I’m still not 100% sure that’s how I’d handle it.

You’ll want to make sure they understand to pick up a “small packet” each time, or you’ll run out of cards. If they’ve been discarding cards neatly into a pile, you can re-use the discard pile for the same process, but I would try to avoid it.

The good news is, even if things get screwed up along the way, you still know what card the person put in the envelope under the table. That would be a pretty strong trick even if you just have to abandon everything and figure it out “by magic” or whatever.

Dear Jerxy: Cutting Them Off

Dear Jerxy: What do you do if people are asking to see trick after trick? My instinct tells me not to do too many, in order to not overwhelm them and keep the tricks feeling special. On the other hand, if they’re asking to see something, and I have tricks I could be showing them, it feels dumb to not be showing them something. But I have so many in my repertoire I sometimes feel like I can’t stop. What do you think?

Signed,
Stopless in Seattle

Dear Stopless: The key factor in my decision making in this sort of situation is if I’m ever going to see this person again. For example, if I’m traveling and I strike up a mini-friendship with someone on a flight or at a hotel bar or something, I may end up showing them something. And if they’re super enthusiastic and asking for more, more, more, I may just go all night with them. I do this even though I think it’s a detriment to the magic, and even though I know the impact of any given effect will be lessened when performed in this way.

But I do this for two reasons:

1. It gives me the chance to try out a bunch of stuff I’m working on in an efficient way (as in not having to find a different person for each trick).

2. I try to think about what’s best from their perspective. If someone really loves seeing magic, is it better for them to focus that energy on one truly mind-blowing piece of magic? Or to see a whole bunch of stuff? I think an argument can be made for both. But if I’m only going to see them this one time, and they really love magic, and they’re asking for more, then I’m probably going to give them as much as they want. It’s likely going to blend into one generic memory in their mind, with very few specific details sticking out. But I’m fine with that if they look back and think what an enjoyable time they had in a general way.

The question is, how does me performing best serve this interaction and this relationship? With a single-serving friend, it can make sense to go ahead and overwhelm them with stimuli and perform a lot.

With someone you’re going to see at least semi-regularly, the relationship/interaction will be best be served by performing less, and keeping those performances feeling somewhat special.

I will give you a damn near perfect analogy for this...

Imagine you met a professional pastry chef somewhere randomly. You can imagine that an amazing memory would be the night you met that pastry chef and they shared with you a dozen different desserts. And you had bite after bite of cakes and cookies and doughnuts and croissants and cinnamon rolls and so on.

But if your friend was a pastry chef, and you saw her somewhat frequently, your enjoyment of those desserts would likely diminish if she brought you a bunch of stuff every time you saw her. At the very least, your appreciation for that lemon blueberry pie would be greater if she brought you one perfect slice to indulge in, rather than if it was one of eight desserts you tried. And the memory of that pie eaten on its own would almost certainly be much stronger and more long-lasting.

The impreciseness of this analogy is only in the fact that the average person has a much bigger appetite for pastries than magic. So the concept of getting “burned out” on something is only more true for magic than baked good.

But how do you gently turn someone down if they’re asking to see more and you’re trying not to wear them out?

Well, this is where it helps to frame yourself as someone with an interest in magic and not someone with any legitimate special powers. People outside of the magic world don’t have a clear understanding of how magic works in the broad sense. So if you perform a trick or two and they’re asking for more, you can just say that at this point in time you don’t have anything else to show them. You can say something like, “These aren’t like the tricks you would read in books in the public library, where you can just learn a whole bunch, and always be able to perform a couple dozen tricks at any time. With these types of tricks you sort of master one or two at a time. And if you don’t keep on top of them regularly, your ability to perform them falls away.”

If you say, “I don’t really know anything else I can show you at the moment,” that maintains the rarity of the magic performance without you having to say, “No! I’m done.”

At this point it’s a great idea to tell them about something you’re “working on” that you’ll try to have ready the next time you see them. Or teach them a trick that sets them up to be more fooled sometime down the road. This way you can capitalize on their interest in a way that boosts future performances.

Dustings #59

This gets my vote for worst magic trailer of the year. Thoughts? —RE

Well… hmmmm. The trailer is nicely shot and put together professionally. So in that sense it’s fine. But I’m not sure that’s what we care about from magic trailers.

I’m not someone who is super interested in puling a shish kebab skewer (or whatever) out of my finger, so I sent this along to a virtual focus group of 20 people and asked these questions.

What is the trick supposed to be?

Were you fooled by the trick?

What is your best guess as to how the trick is done?

18 people responded. They all seemed to understand the idea of the trick. Three of them said they were fooled. And all of them had the same or similar “best guess” that involved him hiding the stick behind his hand (either during a cut or when the hand goes off screen). So based on what we see in the trailer, everyone had a reasonable explanation for how it was done. So I guess that would qualify it as not a good trailer.

Obviously if seeing this in real life, they would have to come up with some other explanation because you can’t cut or “go off screen” in the real world. But we don’t really know what this might look like in the real world, so there’s no way to judge.

As a magician, if I wanted to perform this trick, the important thing for me would be to have some idea of what it looks like in a real performance. How much freedom of movement do I have? How easy is it to get into the trick? This trailer addresses none of that. You have one choppy demonstration in the forest, and then one that was apparently shot in a cavern during a solar eclipse. If the goal is to sell me on a trick, that does the opposite. It suggests no confidence in what this trick might look like in the real world.

(If the people behind this trick want to link me to an uncut, real-world performance, I’d be happy to post it here. I’m here to help!)

That’s why, even though the production value is considerably lower, I much prefer this trailer for Marcus Eddie’s similar effect, Splinter.

At least that tells me what I’m getting.

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Okay, I need your help. I’ve found myself using the word “magical” more often on this site and I can’t really tell if it’s accurate writing or lazy writing.

What I’m trying to describe is a quality of certain effects where the response goes beyond “How did he do that?” and is more like, “How could this be possible?”

There’s an otherworldliness to the “magical” feeling. It’s not just something you feel in your head, it’s in your whole body.

I think there are three responses to magic in general. An audience can be left:

• feeling entertained

• feeling fooled

• with a magical feeling

Not just one of these, of course. They can feel each thing to a different extent.

However, almost all of our time, effort, and discussion in magic is spent on how to fool people to greater degrees.

Then, a smaller percentage of “more evolved” performers are thinking about how to be more entertaining with their fooling.

But hardly anyone is talking about the dreamy, romantic, mystifying, “magical” feeling that certain tricks/presentations can generate. I get the impression some people think that if you just fool people hard enough that will somehow get them to that “magical” feeling. But I don’t think the two things are necessarily related.

Anyways, while a lot of the stuff I’ve written has been my attempt to come up with ways to target the magical feeling, I’ve only recently started thinking about it in this specific way. And I’m wondering if there’s a better word to be using than “magical.” If you have thoughts, let me know.

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Thanks for those of you who’ve sent me some bad forces as per my last post.

Here’s a nice bad one to get your audience to think card forces are dumb . Your force card is on top. You cut the deck into 6 piles and form them into a line with the top pile third from one of the ends. Then you use the Hot Rod force to force that pile and turn over the top card. In this case you would actually hope to get a number you have to spell, as that makes the force dumber.

Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting you teach this to someone out of the blue. I’m suggesting you do something where you reference a trick you’re “working on” or an “earlier version” of a trick you want to show them at some point. Then you demonstrate the trick and in the place of a good force, you use a shitty one. Which then gets exposed/taught when you break down the effect for them. (See the previous post and the posts linked within it to further clarify this idea.)

You want it to seem as if this is the type of thing you’d do to force a card. That way, later when you say, “Okay, just touch any card for me,” that will feel like something entirely different and free and normal.

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Can someone explain the number of retweets on this tweet?

I mean, clearly they’re not legit, but I’m just wondering where they came from (and where they’ve gone to). I can only assume someone bought some fake retweets as a goof (or because they really think I have a Twisting the Aces presentation). Then those accounts got douched out by twitter, but still the number of retweets remains? I don’t really give a shit either way. Just curious.

Help Wanted: What's the Worst Force You Can Think Of?

In this post I wrote about the concept of having a bad marked deck, and why you might want to create one in order to corrupt people’s understanding of what a marked deck is. I enjoy this type of thing—planting seeds for things you won’t harvest until some time has passed. If I ask people if they’ve ever seen a marked deck, most haven’t. And if I introduce the Bad Marked Deck to them, and they believe that to be what marked decks are like, I can then use a good marked deck in the future and—with any luck—they will dismiss the possibility of it being a marked deck because it’s not used in a manner that they would associate with the deck I’ve shown them.

The idea being that people already know about marked decks, so now I want to poison that knowledge in some way. It wouldn’t make sense to introduce a concept to them, and then try and undermine it. But if they already have heard about something, I want to make that thing seem more inadequate than it really is.

You’ll sometimes see this done with the concept of “palming.” Laypeople have already heard of palming so sometimes magicians will mention it in their presentations (such as with the Invisible Palm effect) and demonstrate it in a way that it seems like it wouldn’t fool anyone. That’s the sort of thing I’d like to do with every magical concept laypeople are familiar with.

(By the way, if you’re a supporter of this site, the Jerx Deck you’ll receive next year in your supporter package is going to be a bad marked deck. Not “funny” bad. But just overly-complicated bad.)

So now I’m thinking about ways to do that with card forcing because I’ve recently been doing a number of effects that start with me performing and explaining a shitty version of the trick and then following that up with a similar effect but with a completely different method. This structure seems to generate much stronger responses for me than just doing the better version in isolation. (For more details on this, see this post. Or, if you’re a supporter of the site, see the essay “Garden Pathing” in issue 2 of this year’s newsletter.)

Since I’ve been teaching a lot more crappy tricks, many of which require a force, I need to identify some bad forces that meet these criteria:

They fool people to the extent that it’s not completely obvious how the card was forced.
BUT
The selection process is unnatural/needlessly complicated in a way that makes it obvious this isn’t a truly “free” selection.
AND
Exposing the force wouldn’t reveal any useful deception techniques.

The first thing that came to mind was the 10-20 force, because, as it’s generally described, it’s fucking stupid. “Name a number between 10 and 20,” is no way to start off anything that’s supposed to feel free or random in any manner. At least not when you’re holding something with 52 options in your hand.

And, of course, and process that forces a number could then be used to force a card by counting down to that number in the deck.

But I’m still looking for some more bad forces. So if you know of any (or can create one), send me an email and let me know.

Combining exposure and weak methods is a powerful concept. Teaching them a method, even if it sucks, gives them that little dopamine hit of learning a secret. But it also takes them further away from the sort of methods I’m going to be using. Since they already know of the concept of card forcing, I want them to believe it amounts to literally forcing a card into someone’s hand from a spread (a la the classic force), or that it requires a very convoluted process. That way when they’re just cutting a deck, or touching a card freely, or stopping me while I deal—they’ll be less likely to even conceive those actions could be part of a force.

Monday Mailbag #60

Re: A Jerxian Breakthrough

The breakthrough you’ve discovered is called “honesty and consent.”

All the cool kids are trying it. —MW

Fair enough.

But more than “consent,” I think what I’m searching for in that type of interaction is understanding.

If I say, “Hey, do you want to see a magic trick?” And they say yes. Then I have their consent. But I don’t necessarily have their understanding of what I mean when I ask them if they want to see a magic trick. Because what I want from them is to know that when I show them a trick it might involve a little more involvement and suspension of disbelief than what they may be imagining.

If I ask them if they want to see a trick and they consent and I do a gambling demonstration, I think that works out well.

If I ask them if they want to see a trick and they consent and I do the Ocean’s Eleven version of Spectator Cuts the Aces from this post, then they’re going to be weirded out, because that’s not their understanding of how a magic trick is framed.

The “breakthrough” I had was that by telling them a story about a different performance, or something else I was working on, I could then indirectly familiarize them with the type of of magic I like to perform. And this would allow me to get their “consent” to seeing that type of magic without having to be a real dork about it and be, like, “So, it’s a magic trick. But I often embed it in a kind of fictional interaction. And I don’t want you to be there thinking, ‘That’s not a special kind of gum. That’s just ordinary gum!’ I just want you to try and engage with the story of this special gum. I’m not trying to convince you the gum is actually special. That’s just the story. Got it? Sign here if you consent to seeing such a trick.”

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Hey Andy,

How about doing the Invisible Deck as a trick that a mysterious stranger apparently does for you via post?

That way you can secretly control the outcome for the spectator - whilst giving the credit to the mysterious magician friend.—JM

It’s a good idea, but as someone who has done a lot of faux “third party” magic tricks (where someone else outside of myself and the participant is apparently controlling the magic), I know that they have to end examinable. In these types of presentations its incumbent on you to act like a real spectator. Otherwise it just comes off as a fake-y presentation.

So at the end of the Invisible Deck you’d want to be able to look over the deck just to search for some clue in regards to how it was done. Obviously if you’re using the standard Invisible Deck, that wouldn’t be possible.

But one of the benefits of using a “third-party” presentation is that it can be easier to switch things and end clean. There are a couple reasons why it’s easier:

1. Because you’re not playing the part of the magician, there’s going to be a little less heat on you.

2. You can add in instructions from “the magician” that give you the time and opportunity to do switches, and you don’t have to justify your actions because you’re just following instructions.

Here’s what I mean. If you sent yourself an Invisible Deck in the mail and wrote instructions from “the magician” who sent it to you and the instructions said. “One of you should name any card in the deck. The other person should spread through the deck and remove the one card I reversed in this deck before I sent it to you. Don’t look at it just yet. Have whichever of you named the card hold onto it.” If, at this point in the instructions, it said to walk over to a mirror or close your eyes and repeat some phrase or to switch seats or whatever, that’s all the time you would need to do a deck switch for a normal deck.

I would recommend a deck switch for a deck whose back doesn’t match the back of the invisible deck for a few reasons. First, because it adds a Brainwave type of effect to the interaction. Second, it prevents the notion that maybe you were in on it and you just flipped over the card they named and they weren’t paying close enough attention to notice. And third it leaves you completely clean at the end.

If you don’t use a different color deck, then you end up with a duplicate of whatever card they named. Maybe it’s unlikely to get noticed, but it’s still there. If you do use a different colored deck, then even though there is another one of the named card in the deck, that can make sense if the trick is that the magician took a card from a blue deck and reversed it and stuck it into a red deck before mailing it off. There would be no discrepancy if that was the premise.

But yeah, using an ID in this way is definitely do-able because you can be so clean with it. And that’s what third-party magic requires.

For Christmas you could wrap up the ID and put a bow on it and send it to your house. Apparently from your “magician friend.” And this trick is his “gift” to you (or you and your family).

Dustings #58

I once had an idea for a dating site where you would upload the least flattering pictures of yourself. Maybe there would be some sort of vetting by people who worked on the site to make sure these are truly bad pictures of you. Otherwise the site would operate like a normal dating site. Except when you get to the point where you finally meet your match in person and you think, “Oh, wow! What a pleasant surprise!”

I’ve always done my best to set low expectations with people. If you tell people you’re a great worker, or a great cook, or a great lover, or whatever—that might get your foot in the door (or penis in the vagina)—but then you have to put your actual abilities up against the power of their imagination. And that’s a battle you can almost never win.

This phenomenon plays out in magic ads as well.

Take this trick, SOLID. I watched the video and at first I thought, “A borrowed, signed key penetrates into a can or bottle? That sounds amazing.” Immediately my mind was churning over the possibilities.

Then I watched a little more and did a little reading and realized the key isn’t borrowed. It’s your own key. And it’s a key that easily fits into the can. And you start the effect by just openly putting the key in the can and then “removing” it. Does this make it a bad trick? Not necessarily. But it just makes it not the trick I originally was hoping for.

Now, had the ad copy started, “You pull out your keyring and remove a small key,” they probably would have sold a copy to me. No, I wouldn’t have been initially as interested as I was when I thought it was a regular-sized borrowed key, but at least my interest wouldn’t have waned the more I learned about the trick. I would have been focused on the positives of the trick rather than where it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Is this good marketing advice? No, probably not. But I’m mentioning it now because if and when I start releasing products in the future, I’m going to use this approach. I’m going to establish the limitations and the weak spots first and then express what makes the trick worth it despite those factors.

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Love to see such a genuine excited reaction to a magic performance…

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This trick teaches the very important lesson that bullying isn’t all that bad because the effects of bullying can be undone with the snap of your fingers. Wait… that can’t possibly be the message, can it?

Hmm…

Well, I can’t find any other lesson to be learned here.

The sad thing is, even if you can solve your bullying problems with magic, you still have parents that sent you to school with a lunch consisting of a juice box, a mandarin orange, and cookies. Jesus, mom, get the kid some goddamn protein. No wonder he’s getting bullied. He can’t build any muscle mass!

A Jerxian Breakthrough

There’s a certain style of magic I write about frequently here that I describe as “immersive fiction” or the “Romantic Adventure” performance style. That’s where the goal is for the trick to feel less like a demonstration and more like an (obviously) fictional story that they are taking a part in. In a previous post I described this as a direction that magic might evolve towards in the future (for certain types of performers).

I wrote:

I suspect magic will be seen as a form of experiential storytelling. Instead of being a one person exhibition (like being a juggler or ventriloquist) it will be more aligned with things like escape rooms, haunted houses, or parlour games. I think magic won't be seen as something you do, but an experience you create. The best magicians will be those who craft the best immersive stories for people.

The issue with this is that it’s kind of an unusual way to present magic. And while I find it to be wildly more enjoyable for people to experience than a traditional “demonstration of my magic skills,” it’s also something they’re not used to. There’s a learning curve involved when it comes to enjoying this sort of performance because it doesn’t really work well if the spectator has the typical mindset people often approach magic with: “You’re going to try and fool me, and my goal is to try and figure it out.” Having their guard up means they’re not appreciating the story because they’re questioning it. That’s not an attitude that helps them get immersed in what you’re showing them. “Wait… your aunt wasn’t a gypsy. I’ve met your aunts.” That’s not the vibe you want them to have.

The ideal mindset I want my spectators to have is, “This story is meant to be fictional, so I can just let myself get lost in it without questioning things. And I’m not going to figure out the magic no matter how hard I try, so I might as well sit back and enjoy it.”

That’s the “ideal,” mind you. I’m not saying everyone I perform for has this mindset.

The hard part of this style of magic is really getting people somewhere near that point. Magic—especially amateur magic—is almost defined by the “challenge” of it. So coming at it from a different perspective can be difficult for people.

For a long time, the only method I had in my arsenal to get people prepared for this type of performance was to slowly introduce it to them over the course of many performances. The post I’ve linked to the most on this site is this Bedrock post where I talk, step by step, about how I go about doing that. It’s a long process, but it’s an enjoyable one for me.

But now I’ve found a shortcut to get people up to speed on what I’m going for much faster.

This was really a breakthrough for me, and it’s so obvious and stupid that it shouldn’t have been, but it is.

Here’s my big breakthrough. Here’s how I get people to expect a different type of magic experience…

I tell them.

I just tell them that I make up stories to go along with the tricks, or to give the tricks the feeling of a weird experience or something like that.

This doesn’t get them prepared to sit through a 90 minute immersive trick. But it does get them to used to the idea that we both know this is meant to be a fictional little bit of entertainment, and not to get too worked up about trying to “catch me” when the story is unfolding.

I stumbled over this when I pulled out the trick Kids Kards for the first time in a while. Someone I didn’t know too well was at my place and I told her something truthful. I said, “Oh, this is a trick I used to do a lot but I stopped doing it. I would tell people this story about me dating this elementary school teacher and how I would visit the classroom and do a trick every now and again. And at the end of the year the kids made me this deck of cards. And blah, blah, blah. But the problem was, people were really believing the story. And they were getting emotionally invested in these kids and this relationship. And I didn’t want that. I was just trying to show them something fun. Here, I’ll show you.”

Then I went into the trick with my old presentation. And she was immediately onboard. Because she knew it was a made-up story, she could just let herself go along with it. She didn’t have to question whether I believed it or whether I wanted her to believe it. She could just enjoy it. And then, later in the evening when I went into another trick, she again instantly realized what the situation was. I didn’t have to explain to her again what the deal was, because I had already established the type of thing to expect.

And I’ve had similar success with other people. I just have to say something, anything really, that lets them understand that I like to use magic to create the feeling of going through some weird experience. That these stories are intended to be fictional and just for their enjoyment.

I would say that I still prefer taking the long way to get to this point and slowly getting them accustomed to this style of performance. But if I want to move that process along, or if I’m not going to have that much time with the person, this technique allows me to get into some more interesting performances, without freaking them out, and without the intermediary steps along the way