What Makes A Good Magic Trick? - Why Presentation Is So Important

There are always two parts to a magic trick; the 'skill' part, aka the sleight of hand, and the presentation part. The presentation is your patter, your completely bull story, the distraction for the audience so that you can pull off the sleight of hand unnoticed.

The most important, by far and what I find to be the most DIFFICULT is most certainly the presentation. The sleight of hand is easy! You can practice sleight of hand while you watching TV, listening to music, or whenever you have your hands free.

Presentation, on the other hand, requires a lot of skills; good memory, creativity, charisma and charm. If you have your audience glued to what you're about to do, glued to your story as you tell them, you can work your hands unnoticed.

Not only that, but you can actually make the trick 10 times better just by what you say and how you say it alone. Let me give an example:

One of my favorite tricks to perform on friends is called 'Chance Zero'. Basically, you take a pile of cards, shuffle them, and then lay down the deck. You tell the victim to start putting cards down, into one pile or another; if they think it's a red card, put it in pile one. If they think it's a black card, put it in pile two. Of course, they'll be doing this with the deck face down.

Incredibly, they get every single card in the right pile.

I did this trick on a female friend the other day. If I had just told her "Hey, take this pile and if you think it's red put it here, if black put it here. BET YOU GET THEM ALL RIGHT!" with a stupid grin on my face, she'd have probably been amazed, but would also have been suspicious. She'd suspect the deck was set up, or that the deck was fake. She might just give a small smile and said "Nice trick."

Instead, I told her: "Okay, this trick is a little weird... it's not really a trick, it's more a measure of someone's clairvoyance... you might not be able to do this, but there's something about you that tells me you can pull this off...take your time, do it really slowly and just visualize each card. Let a picture or color form in your mind and place the card according to the picture you get."

As you can see, I was talking utter trash. But the point is, I HAD FUN WITH IT. I got her engrossed in a little story, and by the time I had finished, she was dying to try it. She took her time, she really sat there concentrating, and took it incredibly seriously. It was really cute.

Anyway, after she had (finally) set all the cards down, I started to turn over the first card to see how she did. You should have seen her face; staring, her eyes intent on the card, aching to know if she "has the power". Oh, one right. She bites her lip. Another, and another...by the time we had finished, she had giggled, screamed, and attempted to punch me. She couldn't believe it. She didn't know if it was a trick or if she was simply psychic.

A few days later, I caught her trying it again, by herself. The trick had such an impression on her not because of the trick, but because of the performance! Because of the story I gave her.

So remember, skill doesn't make a Magician good. The presentation does. When you practice a trick, run your patter through every time so that you have it memorized, and put character into it. You'll be surprised at how well your reactions will improve.