Word!

The words you select directly impact the magic effect you present. Nowhere is
this principle expressed better than in Kenton Knepper's "Wonder Words"
series of books and audio tapes. Check them out. Kenton reveals the true
power of words and their use to influence, misdirect, and even create their
own magic effects in the minds of your audience.

The latter is an application of "linguistic deception." Carefully chosen
words can make an audience believe something has occurred which didn't happen
in reality. Or they can cause witnesses to your magic recall events after the
fact that never actually took place. It's a powerful tool for magicians, and
deserves serious study.

Patter or Script

"Patter" is the word that magicians use (and most laymen also) to describe
the words used during performance of magic. Many, like myself, prefer to use
the term "script" rather than "patter" to give the term a more theatrical
aire. But patter has such a wide usage, that I find it easy to go ahead and
use that term from time to time. So expect it to be seen here.

Writing the script (or patter, if you must) for your effects and your show is
the first point of attack for an amateur magician who wishes to make his
magic "more original." It's tough to invent new tricks. So much has come
before, and many great magical thinkers have already been over so many p
ermutations and combinations of the basic magic "effects" and principles,
that it takes a lifetime of study, some serendipity and a little luck to come
up with something really new in magic. But the words we use... now THERE is a
frontier with boundless new material open to us.

Resources for Creative Magical Writing

One of my favorite resources for writing was advocated by the late great Sid
Lorraine of Toronto, Canada. On the surface, it seems too simplistic and
obvious. He used the DICTIONARY.

Well, of course, you might think. But Sid Lorraine had an original "a-ha!"
way of writing patter. He would find any extremely obscure definition and
give it out of context to describe any prop introduced which would never be
seen outside a magic show. For example: a phantom tube or a crystal silk
cylinder. Just to give you an example I have randomly opened my dictionary
and will write some patter for a ghost tube in Sid Lorraine style.

"This tube is an example of the rare ranunculus, which consists of chiefly
trivalent metallic elements whose oxides are the rare earths, usually
lanthanum, and sometimes yttrium and scandium." Delivered in a deadpan
fashion while showing the tube and its apparent "emptiness" is sure to get an
amused reaction from your audience. (See "Thinking About Patter - Write It
Yourself" which is an audiocassette set by Sid Lorraine.)

There are other examples where taking something slightly out of context can
create wonderfully humorous patter. Ricky Jay took a script word for word
right out of Erdnase's "Expert at the Card Table" and applied it to his own
card routine and capture a live national television audience back in the
'70's (on one of Doug Henning's early live TV specials). My friend and mentor
Charles Pecor confided in me that he had from time to time placed his
audience in hysterics by using the words straight out of the Tarbell Course
of Magic. Memorizing Tarbell's scripts and delivering them word for word
somehow created a wonderfully funny anacronistic effect. Much of Tarbell's pat
ter was very funny through deliberate construction, and much of it is funny
in places where it was not necessarily intended to be funny.

Now I'll tip one of my personal best-kept secrets for inventing magic and
writing scripts. I read a lot of science fiction.

Science fiction can spark new ideas for magicians. Science fiction writers
often try to extrapolate science into future applications that transcend the
current state of technology. We as magicians strive constantly to create
illusions that cannot be explained away as a science and technology. This is,
I might add, an increasingly difficult task as technology advances to leaps
and bounds every year in this, the Third Millenium. So we have to think like
a science fiction writer, and keep advancing our magic ahead of technology.

Magicians of the past have used the latest technology to create their magic.
Robert-Houdin's "Light and Heave Chest" is a remarkable example. We simply
have to keep pushing the envelope. Years ago I wrote in a magazine column th
at "with laser technology being in the news, sooner or later we should see a
magician use a laser beam to sever a person in half rather than a saw." Sure
enough, about a year later we witnessed David Copperfield do exactly that on
TV.

Fortunately we have those who create science fiction to do a lot of that sort
of thinking for us. At no time has Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote been more
relevant, that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic."

On Being Creative and Original

It sounds like a paradox, but to be different from the rest one must read and
study the work of others. Learn all the magic you can and then you will have
more tools to build your original ideas. Knowing the ideas of others will get
you thinking in new areas. The more knowledge you have, the less likely you
will be caught up re-inventing tricks that have already been done before.

Seek alternate sources by reading outside the magic literature. Heck, if Sid
Lorraine can write comedy patter using the dictionary, imagine what you would
do with an encyclopaedia!

Until the next installment, it has been my pleasure...

Dan Garrett