talkmagic.co.uk

As I said in my intro thread, I have turned the twenty-seven card trick into a story about a wandering magician who robs a temple and faces the wrath of the gods in order to complete his quest to find a certain powerful magical artifact. The cards represent treasures on the altars to the three gods, and the card selected by the spectator is really the magical artifact in disguise. Following on from this, I am interested in discussing the role that story can play in a magician's patter. What are the cliches, what are the opportunities, and what are the hazards?

Near the end of T. A. Waters' excellent article "Unsympathetic Magic", Waters says about Ricky Jay that "Ricky's storytelling ability was the central part of his show, but it was done in a very different context than what is usually thought of as 'story' magic." Well, the very little of Ricky Jay that I've seen didn't appear to involve story at all, but I am intrigued by the concept that there is a way of telling stories in magic that is usually thought of as story magic, and a way of telling stories that isn't. Waters' article goes on to say, "Comedy and story magic are subjects for an entire column, and this one is already running long; onward". I don't know if he ever wrote the follow-up - if he did, it certainly isn't on the public archives - but I imagine it would be a good read.

How might we classify the ways in which story can be used in magic, in order to better identify the cliches and opportunities?

One approach would be to classify them according to the relationship between the story and the props, which can be literal or symbolic. In stage magic, I think the relationship will usually be literal, in that if the story calls for, say, a sword, then the corresponding prop will actually look like a sword. Examples from close-up will tend to be symbolic, in that playing cards will most likely represent something other than playing cards. (There are exceptions - you can use playing cards literally, as in, "once upon a time an old wizard sat down and played a game of cards", but I think that would be a rather dull story.) Personally, my bias is to favour the symbolic relationship.

Within the category of stories with symbolic props, I think it's worth dividing them into those where the props (e.g. cards) represent people, and everything else (including my own story, in which the cards represent treasures). The reason I'd like to make that division is because I feel that the cards-as-people thing is, perhaps, just a little bit of a cliche, and I'd like to see more examples of the alternative. A typical cards-as-people story might be a romance in which a King and a Queen magically get back together, which doesn't excite me very much.

Another way to categorise the ways story can be used in magic might be the ratio of story to effect. I can see three broad categories here. First, a story in which there is one main effect corresponding to the climax of the story. Second, a story corresponding to an entire routine of related effects. Third, a story illustrated through a variety of effects that are more disjoint than a typical routine and may even involve completely different props. Personally, I think examples of the third type are likely to be too disjoint, but they may fit some performance styles.

Related to the above is the question of whether the story is written to fit the effect, or the effect is chosen to fit the story. I don't want to put too much emphasis on this, because the difference should generally be invisible to the audience, but stories written to fit effects are more likely to be the examples where the ratio of story to effect is one-one, and effects written to fit stories are more likely to be the examples where the ratio of story to effect is one-many.

I haven't even mentioned genre, but that too is probably a dimension along which one could identify cliches and opportunities.

Having identified some of the ways in which story can be used in magic (and please add any further categories you feel are worth identifying), the next question is how to find examples in the performances of real magicians. A little Internet research throws up Eugene Burger and Robert E. Neale as names associated with close-up story magic, but as I have never seen either performer I can only go on what I've read on the Internet. I'm intrigued because, having used story in magic myself, I'm interested in the variety of approaches taken by others. (Some relevant resources: here and here. The latter is a thread of book recommendations on another forum, and I'm sufficiently intrigued to wonder whether I should buy the Neale books at some stage.)

As a tangentially-related postscript, I'll mention that I disagree with magicians who say (as Burger does here) that a good magician tries to make the audience suspend their rational, analytic mind. I couldn't agree more with the idea that a good magician will engage the non-rational, creative mind of the audience, but I disagree with the notion that engaging one aspect of the mind entails suspending another. I don't see them as either/or, and I certainly don't agree with the idea that the rational mind is in opposition to the sense of wonder. I think the best magic engages the whole mind (an idea that Scott Wells appears to endorse here).

Enough of my ramblings. It's time for me to let people with more experience have a turn to say something.

Adrian Morgan wrote:Following on from this, I am interested in discussing the role that story can play in a magician's patter. What are the cliches, what are the opportunities, and what are the hazards?

I believe that the cliches only exist in the spectators' minds, the opportunites are only limited by our imaginations and the hazards are only of our own invention.

In my opinion, a story's success in a routine, be it in a professional or an amateur routine, depends on the conviction with which it is delivered. I personally could not pull off the 'Gods' story of the 21 or 27 card trick, but only because I could not do it with conviction.

However, delivering a cards-representing-people story would come easily to me and I hope that the spectators would remember the effect by it's story, despite many a magician finding plots of that nature somewhat 'cheesy'.

Zack wrote:
However, delivering a cards-representing-people story would come easily to me and I hope that the spectators would remember the effect by it's story, despite many a magician finding plots of that nature somewhat 'cheesy'.

I suppose it depends on who delivers the story, and under what context. You could see that people would think David Copperfield's stories to be a bit 'cheesy' as it were, as he plays grately on people's emotions, and his storylines are often trips back to childhood, and full of child-like wonder (which I suppose is one of the main purposes of magic, to return us to the childlike state of wonder that we've lost in our cynical harsh lives).

However, you take someone like Eugene Burger, mentioned above, who takes on the 'wise old sage' role, sort of like a wise old grandfather figure, who is actually very knowledgable, and the story telling can take on a whole new meaning.

It may be no surprise that my favourite illusions by Copperfield are silent, performed to music, and likewise, Lance Burton's FISM winning manipulation routine wouldn't be the same if it was spoken, but there is definitely an important place in magic for story telling, and I feel that it's something that many can overlook.

I suppose there's a tendancy for people to think that funny equals entertaining, but a good story can be serious, or funny, or both, and maybe it would be a good idea for us to look at a more serious approach sometimes, to add a bit more gravity to what we do.

I've always considered magic an art, rather than just an entertainment, and it's rare to find an artform that can combine so many different aspects that other artforms take individually. For example, magic can be as visual as the most beautiful painting, as dramatic as the most exciting piece of music, or as profound and moving as the best written book.

I suppose it's down to the individual performer to decide what fits them best, and most will go down the road of humour, as you may find it the easiest way for your audience to accept your magic, but the right story with the right person can work wonders.

As for the cliches, childhood memories are probably the most overplayed (David Copperfield's Snow springs to mind), but I'm sure there are many others

It depends on who you are performing to as to what kind of 'story' you should tell. Some people like believable psychic style stories while women mainly enjoy the fairytale type stories regarding kings and queens etc.
Some of the storytelling I use for more psychic based effects are pure BS which people may believe in and if they seem sceptical, the outcome of the effect adds to the storys credibility.
I use different stories for a simple effect such as the Haunted Key. One I use is that objects record events that happen and play them back which is what ghosts are, recordings being replayed. I then go on to produce the key which I claim belonged to an old lady who lived near me and she would use this key every day to open the back door of her house after she had been shopping. One day, whilst opening the door, she had a heart attack and died and the key replays this.
I state I managed to get hold of the key and make it rise slowly and the drop suddenly at the last part of the revolution. A story this simple has spooked some people out.

For others who are less inclined to enjoy a good ghost yarn I present it as a telekinesis demonstration and claim I was tested at a laboratory and this is one of thie things I had to do. A good follow on is if I am wearing a Loop and can move other objects.

Storytelling depends on the person and the type of concept they respond to. The flash-bang "Look at dis, guy!" approach of the you tuber crowd doesn't leave any lasting impact with a spectator but a good yarn does.

There's a chance that in writing this reply, I've missed the point of this thread entirely, and if so I apologise, but here's my opinion on the topic.

I am generally not a fan of tricks that involve telling the spectator(s) a story using a deck of cards. Sam the Bellhop and similar tricks leap to mind, and whilst in their own right these are very impressive tricks and ones that often get a good response from the people they are performed for, they are essentially displays of card control. Now, I'm sure someone will point out that there are very few tricks that aren't displays of card control in one sense or another, so I'll go into a little more detail (I apologise if this goes a little off-topic).

Let's take Sam The Bellhop as a well known example. Let's face it, it's cool. Any trick where you repeatedly shuffle and cut a deck of cards and yet name every card you pull out, whilst going through the entire deck, is an impressive trick. But someone watching that trick is going to walk away going "Wow, that guy/girl is really good with a deck of cards". Now, if that is the image you want to present, the Card Sharp, then that's your job done. However, can you really call that magic?

Personally, the point of doing magic for someone is to give them a little moment of wonder, that few seconds of absolute amazement that will stay with them long after the trick has ended. Derren Brown often talks about the idea of a trick having "an emotional hook", and this is an idea that really hit home with me. When you do magic for someone it should be more than the cards/coins/whatever doing clever things to impress people. It should be more than a pleasant suprise for the spectator, it should convey some sort of emotion.

This is, I think, where my personal idea of the "story" of the trick comes in. I have a trick I do where essentially an audience member takes a card out of a deck and places it face down between us, at which point I pull out four other cards and the five of them make a very strong poker hand. That's an alright piece of trickery, but it's just that, trickery. I'm sure someone sharp enough could watch that and work out how it's done. In the particular routine I do this trick in I talk about how I got into magic by a friend of mine teaching me when I was younger, and how we played cards a lot before he taught me magic. Then I talk about how he moved away and I haven't seen him since, but I still have the cards from the last game of poker we played, except one I've lost... etc.

The trick in itself doesn't take a lot of time, and it could be over and done with very quickly. However, by telling the spectator a story I've involved them, and hopefully by this point they are interested and perhaps even care about how things turned out between me and my best friend. The story I told means that all of a sudden the trick means something, it's important to me and has a poignancy connected with it that the audience feels, and this makes the trick that much more "magical". When the spectator walks away, they'll remember the wonder of how it's done and the emotion connected to the trick, and it will seem all the more amazing.

Anyway, that's my two pennies worth, sorry for rambling.

Serendipity wrote:There's a chance that in writing this reply, I've missed the point of this thread entirely, and if so I apologise, but here's my opinion on the topic.

No problem wrt the point of the thread, which is mostly to look at the diversity of ways in which stories can be used in magic.

However, I found it a little confusing that you started off by saying you're generally not a fan of tricks that involve a story, yet you finished by saying how a story can make a trick more interesting. Seems inconsistent. Are you saying that a story is potentially a good way to present magic but rarely meets that potential in practise, or what?

Let's take Sam The Bellhop as a well known example.

Is it well known? I've never heard of it, so I looked it up just so I could understand what you're talking about. (I've also never heard of a bellhop, so I looked it up in Wikipedia and learned that a bellhop is a hotel porter). In my opinion ... boring. It's not a genre that remotely appeals to me, but if there are people who enjoy that sort of story, then good for them.

I also agree with you that it has little to do with magic.

I have a trick I do where essentially an audience member takes a card out of a deck and places it face down between us, at which point I pull out four other cards and the five of them make a very strong poker hand. That's an alright piece of trickery, but it's just that, trickery. I'm sure someone sharp enough could watch that and work out how it's done. In the particular routine I do this trick in I talk about how I got into magic by a friend of mine teaching me when I was younger, and how we played cards a lot before he taught me magic. Then I talk about how he moved away and I haven't seen him since, but I still have the cards from the last game of poker we played, except one I've lost... etc.

I suggest that to my list of ways to divide up the stories used in magic, we should add a division between anecdotal stories - in which the magician describes something which (he claims) happened to himself or someone he knows - versus stories without that claim of a personal connection.

The reason I think it's useful to make these divisions is because if it turns out that some kinds of stories are used more than others, realising that may inspire new ideas for presenting magic.

Your examples raise tangential questions about tricks that involve spectacular poker hands, and the extent to which the average spectator identifies with such tricks, but that would be off-topic for this thread. It may or may not be worth discussing elsewhere, though.

Yeah, sorry, wasn't entirely clear about what I meant. Essentially what I mean is that I like my tricks to have a plot, a reason to involve the audience, but I don't like things like "Here is a story about kings and queens" or whatever, as I think that generally these lack the emotional hook that you need for a good trick. That is of course only my opinion.

Serendipity wrote:Yeah, sorry, wasn't entirely clear about what I meant. Essentially what I mean is that I like my tricks to have a plot, a reason to involve the audience, but I don't like things like "Here is a story about kings and queens" or whatever, as I think that generally these lack the emotional hook that you need for a good trick. That is of course only my opinion.

Following on from this . . . on one of the URLs I linked to further up, Eugene Burger says, "I think a whole show of stories would be equally tedious, but one story can make your show much more interesting". So one story in a show is a good idea, but a story for every trick is not.

However, I imagine that if you do one trick using a story (about openly fictional characters) and one trick using an anecdote (about people you claim to know), then that would add to the variety of the act.