creating magic tricks – MagicShow.Tips

Take Action…

The book I’m reading right now is Atomic Habits by James Clear. This is about creating new habits and breaking old ones using small steps. I’m about halfway through it and really liking it so far. I’m practicing more, and dinking around on social media less. So that’s a good start.

One thing that was mentioned in the book was the difference between motion and action. Motion is the planning and the action is the actual doing. To relate this to magic, motion is thinking about the method of a trick and trying to look at it from all angles. Action is actually trying the trick of building the prop.

I agree that action is more important that motion and the sooner you start the action part, they more you’ll learn about what you’re working on. You can design and tweak a trick on paper, but it’s you don’t get better at the trick until you start actually doing it.

One of my theories on creating magic is that ideas don’t belong in notebooks. They belong out in the world being performed. The sooner you try the idea, the sooner you know if you will like it, if the audience likes it, or if it’s even a good idea.

Got out a take action!

Corkage Fee…

Sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head. For me it’s the title of a magic trick, and it’s not a good title either. The title is “Corkage Fee“. For me that just leads to something involving money and a cork. My original idea was a cork turning into dollar bills. The second idea was a cork that disappeared when rolled into a dollar bill. I came up with a barely working version of the second idea.

I started playing with a third idea for a trick using a cork and a coin:

While not the best idea, I think it may have some uses for Instagram type videos.

Easy Way To Be Creative…

One of the easiest ways to be creative is to make tricks based on an upcoming holiday. If there’s not a big holiday like Thanksgiving on the horizon, look up the different “national days”. These are things like, National Hotdog Day. Once you have a theme, it’s much easier to come up with tricks. Here’s … Continue reading “Easy Way To Be Creative…”

One of the easiest ways to be creative is to make tricks based on an upcoming holiday. If there’s not a big holiday like Thanksgiving on the horizon, look up the different “national days”. These are things like, National Hotdog Day. Once you have a theme, it’s much easier to come up with tricks.

Here’s a trick I did for Thanksgiving a few years ago:

This is a trick I read in a Jim Steinmeyer book that used your hand. I found it lent itself to using a turkey hand really well. This makes it a great themed trick for Thanksgiving.

Here’s one that I did for for National Light Bulb Day a long time ago:

Putting a box around creating makes it so much easier to come up with ideas. Trying to come up with ideas without any parameters is incredibly difficult!

No Bad Ideas…

One of the things I try to do is act on most of my ideas. No matter how bad, impractical, or not my style it is. Just working them out is a good exercise for my brain. Most of these ideas will never make it into my show. Here’s an idea I’ve had in my … Continue reading “No Bad Ideas…”

Here’s an idea I’ve had in my head for a little while:

I’ve come up with several methods for it, all of which are very impractical. This one is probably the most usable version of the trick.

The downfall is that the trick isn’t how unpractical the method is, it’s that it’s a small trick. Visually it’s hard to see, and it’s got a very specific spot in a show that at can be. This trick has to be the opening of a card set, or when you introduce an additional deck of cards into a card set.

I’m glad I worked through the methods and got to work out my creativity muscles.

Work It Out…

One of the things I do when I buy a magic book, is that I try to work through everything that’s reasonable to work through. What I mean by that is that I I’m not going to build an illusion if it’s in the book, but I will build simpler project. I try work through every trick that doesn’t require a crazy gimmick I don’t have.

I think this makes me a better magic creator and performer. It allows me to improvise much better as I’ve already done something a few times, it makes it easier to recreate when the moment occurs. It also makes you look at props differently.

When I travel, I try to make little videos of magic tricks with things found in my hotel room, or in today’s case my state room as I’m performing on a cruise ship this week. This morning when I was brushing my teeth, I noticed the cups in the bathroom were big enough to hold a deck of cards. That then led me to thinking about the trick Everywhere and Nowhere by Hofzinser that uses a glass to isolate a deck of cards. That led me to wondering if a “flap card” would work in a glass. Turns out a flap card works great in a glass, and I like the isolation that the glass adds to the change of the card.

Now it’s got me thinking about how I can use this in a show. In a cabaret show, or a stage show where you have video projection, it would be a great reveal for a tossed out deck. You start with one card in glass as your prediction. The three cards are selected and the prediction changes to three different cards. If they saw their card they sit down. This moves the flap card from essentially a close up trick to something bigger.

Maybe I’ll start to write a tossed out deck routine using the flap card as the premise/ending.