Tricks Are Just Tricks: In Defense of Storytelling in Magic

I recently read an argument about storytelling in magic that got me thinking. The basic idea was that magicians are often told to “give the trick a story,” and in trying to follow that advice, they end up piling an unnecessary narrative on top of an effect that was perfectly strong to begin with.

The example was an Ambitious Card routine accompanied by a story about the magician's grandfather teaching it to him at the kitchen table. The audience is now being asked to listen to a story about Grandpa while also following a card that keeps returning to the top of the deck. The argument is that these two things compete with each other, and removing the grandfather might actually improve the routine.

I agree that this happens.

Where I disagree is with what we should learn from it.

I come from a musical theater background, and to me, the problem isn't that the magician told a story. The problem is that he told a story that had very little to do with what was actually happening.

That's a writing problem.

If a song in a musical stops the show dead for four minutes while a character sings about something that has nothing to do with the plot, the lesson isn't that musicals would be better without songs. The song needs to earn its place.

Story in magic should have to earn its place too.

A trick working isn't the same as a performance

working

One of the suggestions in the original article is to remove the narrative from a routine and perform the effect without it. Is it better or worse?

I think that's a useful exercise. I just don't think the answer tells us quite as much as we think it does.

You can remove a lot from theater and still have the plot function. Take away the underscoring. Lose the choreography. Simplify the costumes and scenery. Cut a scene and replace it with two lines of exposition. The audience can still understand what happened.

But understanding what happened is a pretty low bar for theater.

I feel the same way about magic.

If I strip everything away from an Ambitious Card routine, I still have a card repeatedly coming to the top of the deck. The trick works. It might even be more direct.

But was directness the only goal?

Sometimes it is. There are absolutely moments when I want to show someone something quick and impossible and let that be the whole experience. Not every coin vanish needs to carry the emotional weight of Les Misérables.

But if we're talking about creating a theatrical magic routine, I want to know what happens when we put some of those things back in thoughtfully.

Let's give Grandpa another chance

Take the grandfather example.

Suppose the magician tells us that his grandfather taught him this trick when he was little. Then he proceeds to do a standard Ambitious Card routine while continuing to reminisce about Sunday afternoons in Grandpa's kitchen.

I can see the criticism. The story and the magic don't particularly need each other.

But imagine instead that the routine is about memory.

There are memories we try desperately to hold onto, and others we'd give anything to forget.

The card goes into the deck.

It comes back.

He puts it away again.

It comes back.

At first, the audience assumes the magician is making the card return because that's what magicians do. As the routine continues, maybe we slowly realize that he isn't trying to make it come back anymore.

He's trying to make it stay gone.

Now I care about that card differently.

Nothing about the mechanics of the Ambitious Card has changed, but the repetition has taken on meaning. The story has given the magic context, and the magic is doing something for the story.

You could absolutely remove all of that and still perform the trick.

I just don't think that proves the story was unnecessary.

Magic has structure built into it

One point I found interesting in the original argument was the idea that the Ambitious Card already contains a story. The card goes into the deck, returns, goes back under increasingly impossible conditions and eventually reaches a climax.

I agree that magic naturally contains a lot of dramatic structure. Good routines have escalation, conflict, surprise and resolution.

But I hesitate to call all of that story.

A juggler can add another ball, then another, and finish with the most difficult thing in the act. A singer can keep choosing harder and higher songs. A dancer can build toward the most technically impressive combination.

That's escalation. It's good theater. It doesn't automatically make me emotionally invested in what I'm watching.

For me, story enters when I have some reason to care about what is happening beyond wondering how the performer is doing it.

And I think magicians sometimes undervalue that because we spend so much time thinking about the mechanics of astonishment.

This is where my theater brain kicks in

There's an idea in musical theater that a character sings when speaking is no longer enough. The emotion has reached a place where ordinary dialogue can't contain it anymore, so we accept this completely unrealistic convention that the person starts singing.

Magic can do something very similar.

The impossible thing can express something that words can't.

A torn object restoring can be beautiful simply because restoration is impossible. Put it in the right context, though, and suddenly we're thinking about regret, relationships or all the things in our lives we wish we could put back together.

A prediction can be a demonstration that the magician somehow knew what you were going to choose. In another routine, the same effect can make an audience think about fate, coincidence or how much control we actually have over our lives.

And yes, a bubble can just be a bubble.

But I can tell you from experience that under the right circumstances, watching one disappear can make an audience feel something far beyond, “Oh, neat. It popped.”

That's the part of storytelling in magic that interests me.

I don't necessarily need the audience to follow a plot. I want what I'm saying, what I'm doing and what the magic itself is doing to belong in the same world.

Sometimes a coin should just disappear

I also don't want to swing so far in the other direction that every trick becomes Very Important Art.

Sometimes I want a coin to disappear because it's fun when a coin disappears.

Sometimes the whole purpose of a moment is a laugh.

Sometimes you need thirty seconds of pure astonishment before moving on.

Theater understands that. Not every scene needs to make you cry. In fact, if everything is treated as emotionally important, very little actually feels important.

A good show breathes.

That's why I don't think the question should simply be whether a story can be removed. I'm much more interested in what changes when it is removed.

If I take away the story and nothing changes except that the routine gets shorter, I probably didn't have a very useful story.

If I take it away and the audience now experiences the magic differently, then it was doing something.

We perform for people

This is where I think my theater background has influenced my magic the most.

Magicians spend an enormous amount of time thinking about whether an effect is deceptive, whether the conditions are clear, whether the method is invisible and whether each phase is stronger than the one before it.

Obviously those things matter.

But when I'm building a performance, I'm also thinking about why I'm showing this particular thing to these particular people. What is our relationship at the beginning of the routine, and has it changed by the end? What do I want them to feel while it's happening?

Those questions don't always require a story with a beginning, middle and end. They do require thinking about the audience as something more than witnesses to an impossibility.

Because spectators don't remember our performances the way we do.

They aren't driving home talking about the convincer in phase three.

Half the time they don't even remember the trick correctly.

They remember laughing so hard they couldn't breathe. They remember being nervous when you handed them something. They remember looking at their spouse when something impossible happened. They remember when the entire room suddenly went quiet.

Years later, the card may change in their retelling. The method will definitely change. They might swear the deck was in their own hands the entire time when it absolutely wasn't.

But the feeling can remain remarkably intact.

That's what I'm chasing.

Story can create connection

I actually really like the distinction the original article makes between the narrative a magician tells and the story the audience experiences.

I just don't see a reason to separate them so sharply.

In theater, everything we do is designed to shape the audience's experience. The script does it. Music does it. Lighting does it. Silence does it. A performer crossing the stage at exactly the right moment does it.

A magic presentation can do the same thing.

The fact that an audience's emotional experience has been deliberately constructed doesn't make it less real. That's what performers do.

So when I hear advice that amounts to “say less,” I'm cautious.

Sometimes saying less is exactly right. Silence before a reveal can be much stronger than another paragraph of patter.

But magicians are already very good at cutting things in the name of efficiency. We tighten the script, remove dead time and eliminate unnecessary procedure. All of that is useful until we start cutting away the little things that allow an audience to know us.

A strange aside may have nothing to do with the method but tell the audience exactly who you are. A moment with a spectator may add thirty seconds without making the trick any stronger, but make that person the hero of the routine. A personal story might not increase the impossibility at all, but explain why this particular piece of magic belongs in your hands.

Those things matter to me.

Story should earn its place

So on this point, I think the original argument and I probably agree more than we disagree: don't paste a story onto a trick because somebody told you magic needs storytelling.

I just wouldn't respond by becoming afraid of narrative.

I'd get better at using it.

If you're going to tell me about your grandfather, give me a reason that grandfather belongs with this particular piece of magic. Let the story change how I understand what I'm seeing. Better yet, let the magic accomplish something in the story that words couldn't accomplish on their own.

Know why you're doing the trick.

Know why you're doing it for us.

Know why it belongs to you.

And don't assume that because something can be removed, it should be.

Tricks are just tricks

Maybe this is the biggest thing I brought with me from theater.

Technique gives us a vocabulary, but eventually we have to decide what we want to say with it.

A beautiful voice by itself isn't a musical. A perfect pirouette isn't a ballet.

And a flawless Double Lift isn't automatically a compelling performance.

I don't particularly want an audience to leave only thinking, “I have absolutely no idea how she did that.”

Of course I want the magic to fool them. Of course I want the impossible moment to land.

I also want them to laugh. I want them to care about the person standing next to them. I want them to feel wonder, nostalgia, tension or joy. Sometimes I want something unexpectedly small and silly to hit them right in the heart.

Because eventually they are going to forget the trick.

They'll get the details wrong. They'll combine two routines into one. They'll make the conditions more impossible every time they tell the story.

But they may remember exactly how they felt while they were watching it.

So yes, cut the unnecessary stories. Kill the sentimental monologue that has absolutely nothing to do with the trick. Don't confuse adding words with adding meaning.

But don't become so obsessed with stripping a routine down to its most efficient version that you strip away the reason anyone should care about it.

The trick gets their attention.

What you do with that attention is the art.