I spent about a year confused by two pieces of advice that seemed to directly contradict each other. Both came from people whose work I respect enormously. Both were delivered with conviction. And both, when I tried to follow them, produced real results — which made the contradiction even more maddening.
The first piece of advice came from Ken Weber in Maximum Entertainment. Weber is emphatic on this point: slow down. Pauses are power. Silence is not the enemy. When you feel the audience slipping away, the counterintuitive move is to lower your volume and slow your pace. Speed, Weber argues, kills the moment. It kills the drama. It kills the audience’s ability to process what they are experiencing and respond to it.
The second piece of advice came from Scott Alexander in his lecture notes on stand-up magic. Alexander is equally emphatic, but in the opposite direction: modern audiences process information fast. They are trained by television and digital media. They do not tolerate dead time. Get to the magic quicker. Tighten the pacing. Eliminate unnecessary setup. The danger is not going too fast — it is going too slow.
Slow down. Speed up. Pause more. Eliminate dead time.
For about a year, I toggled between these two directives, never quite landing on either one. Some shows I performed slowly and deliberately, channeling Weber, and the pacing felt stately and grounded but occasionally dragged. Other shows I performed tight and fast, channeling Alexander, and the energy stayed high but the moments of impact felt rushed.
I remember a particularly frustrating night at a corporate event in Salzburg where I tried to do both at once — slow and fast, paused and tight — and the result was a show with no consistent rhythm. It felt like a car being driven by someone who keeps switching between the gas and the brake. Jerky. Uncomfortable. Neither here nor there.
It took a long conversation with Adam Wilber, my partner at Vulpine Creations, before the resolution clicked. Adam listened to me describe the contradiction, and then he said something simple that unlocked the whole thing.
“They’re not talking about the same kind of speed.”
Two Kinds of Speed
There are two distinct dimensions of pacing in a live performance, and they operate independently. Once I understood this, the apparent contradiction between Weber and Alexander dissolved completely.
The first dimension is structural pacing. This is the rate at which the show moves through its content. How long is the setup before the first effect? How much dead time exists between pieces? How many words are spent on setup versus how many on payoff? How quickly does the audience encounter the next interesting thing?
Structural pacing is what Alexander is talking about. Modern audiences need efficient structural pacing. They need the show to move through its content at a rate that respects their processing speed. Long, meandering setups lose them. Extended transitions drain the room’s energy. Unnecessary procedural explanations make them feel like they are waiting in line rather than watching a show.
The second dimension is delivery pacing. This is the speed at which you speak, move, and present individual moments. How fast are your words? How much space exists between your sentences? Do you rush through reveals or let them land? Do you give the audience time to react before moving on?
Delivery pacing is what Weber is talking about. The individual moments of performance need breathing room. A punchline needs a pause before and after it to land. A reveal needs a beat of silence so the audience can process the impossibility. An emotional moment needs space to be felt. Rushing through these moments robs them of their power.
The confusion arises because both Weber and Alexander use the word “pacing” without specifying which dimension they mean. And most performers, including me for that frustrating year, hear “pacing” as a single concept and try to apply both pieces of advice to the same thing.
But they are not the same thing. Structural pacing is about how quickly you get to the meaningful moments. Delivery pacing is about how much room you give those meaningful moments to breathe.
The ideal show has fast structural pacing and deliberate delivery pacing. It moves quickly between moments of engagement but allows each moment to land with full weight.
What Fast Structural Pacing Looks Like
Fast structural pacing means there is no wasted time in your show. Every moment is earning its place. The audience is never waiting for something interesting to happen because something interesting is always happening.
This does not mean the show is frantic. It means the show is dense. Dense with engagement, not dense with content. There is a difference.
A show with fast structural pacing might include a thirty-second story between two effects. That story is not dead time — it is engagement. The audience is listening, processing, connecting emotionally. The story serves as both a transition and a valley (a lower-energy moment that creates contrast with the peaks). Structurally, the pacing is efficient because the story is doing double duty — transitioning and engaging simultaneously.
Compare that to a show with slow structural pacing, where the transition between effects is thirty seconds of the performer walking to a table, picking up a prop, adjusting it, walking back, and then saying, “Okay, for this next one…” Those thirty seconds are dead time. Nothing is happening for the audience. Their attention drifts. Their phones become interesting.
Fast structural pacing is about eliminating the second scenario. It is about ensuring that the time between payoff moments is filled with engagement rather than procedure.
What Deliberate Delivery Pacing Looks Like
Deliberate delivery pacing means you give each important moment room to exist.
Weber describes a technique that changed my performance dramatically. When the audience seems to drift, when you feel their attention softening, the instinct is to speed up — to try to re-engage them by throwing more content at them faster. Weber says do the opposite. Slow down. Lower your volume. Drop your pitch.
I tried this for the first time at a keynote event in Vienna. I was in the middle of a mentalism piece, and I could feel the energy in the room dipping. The setup had been efficient — I had learned that lesson — but the room was large, the hour was late, and the audience was working harder to stay with me than I wanted them to.
My instinct was to speed up. To get to the reveal faster, to re-engage them with the payoff. Instead, I tried Weber’s approach. I slowed down. I lowered my voice. I spoke almost conspiratorially, as if sharing a secret.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. Heads came up. People leaned forward. The very act of slowing down and getting quieter signaled to the audience that something important was about to happen. The change in my delivery was itself a form of engagement — a contrast that their attention systems detected and responded to.
By the time I reached the reveal, I paused. Not a quick beat — a real pause. Three seconds of silence while I held the moment. And then the reveal.
The reaction was significantly stronger than it would have been if I had rushed. The pause had built anticipation. The quietness had created intimacy. The deliberate pace had told the audience, without words, that what was coming was worth waiting for.
That is what Weber means when he says speed kills. He is talking about the speed of delivery in the moments that matter. Rushing through a reveal is like telling the punchline of a joke before the audience has processed the setup. The mechanics are correct, but the experience is diminished.
The Synthesis
Here is how I think about it now, after years of working with both principles.
My show is structurally tight. I move between moments of engagement with minimal dead time. Transitions are scripted. Setups are compressed. Explanations are brief. If a section does not justify its existence, it gets cut. The audience never has time to wonder when the next interesting thing is going to happen because interesting things are happening continuously.
Within that tight structure, my delivery is deliberate. When I reach a moment that matters — a reveal, a punchline, an emotional beat — I give it time. I pause before. I pause after. I let the audience react. I do not rush to the next moment before they have finished processing the current one.
Fast between moments. Slow within moments. That is the synthesis.
Think of it like driving. You want to cover the distance efficiently — no unnecessary detours, no sitting at green lights, no meandering through side streets when the highway is available. That is structural pacing. But when you arrive at a scenic overlook, you stop. You take in the view. You do not drive past it at highway speed because you are worried about your average pace. That is delivery pacing.
The confusion I experienced for a year came from treating the entire drive as one speed. I was either driving slowly everywhere (which made the journey tedious) or driving fast everywhere (which made me blow past the views). The answer was to drive fast between the views and slow at the views.
Practical Application
Let me give a concrete example of how this works in a single piece.
I have a mentalism routine that involves a prediction. The old version went like this: I would explain what was about to happen (twenty seconds of setup), ask a volunteer to make a series of choices (forty-five seconds), build to the reveal (thirty seconds of dramatic language), and then reveal the prediction (five seconds).
The structural pacing of that version was slow. Twenty seconds of setup is too long for a modern audience. Forty-five seconds of choices includes moments where the audience is watching procedure rather than experiencing performance.
The revised version compressed the setup to eight seconds and streamlined the choices so they happened faster and with more audience involvement. That is structural tightening — getting to the engaging moments more quickly.
But the delivery pacing at the key moments actually slowed down. The moment before the reveal, which used to be a rushed build of dramatic language, is now a pause. A long, deliberate pause where I hold eye contact with the volunteer and let the anticipation build. The reveal itself, which used to be a quick flash, is now a slow unfolding. I show the prediction gradually, letting the audience see it piece by piece, giving them time to process each element before the full picture emerges.
The overall duration of the piece is shorter than the old version. The density of engagement is higher. But the moments that matter — the pause, the reveal, the reaction — take longer because they have been given room to breathe.
Why This Matters Beyond Magic
This structural-versus-delivery distinction applies to virtually every form of presentation and communication. In my keynote speaking work, I apply the same principle. The overall flow of the keynote is tight — no wasted slides, no unnecessary tangents, no sections that do not earn their place. But the key moments — the stories, the insights, the calls to action — are delivered with deliberate pacing. Pauses. Eye contact. Letting the room absorb what I have said before moving on.
In my consulting work, the principle applies to how I present strategic recommendations. Move efficiently through the analysis. When you reach the recommendation, slow down. Let the client sit with it. Do not rush past your most important slide to get to the appendix.
Fast between the moments that matter. Slow within them. Weber and Alexander, reconciled. Not by choosing one over the other, but by understanding that they were always talking about different things.
The performer who only hears Weber ends up with a show that feels ponderous and self-indulgent. The performer who only hears Alexander ends up with a show that feels rushed and thin. The performer who hears both, and understands the distinction, ends up with a show that moves with purpose and lands with power.
Speed kills, yes. But only in the moments that deserve to live.