Before I ever wrote a magic script, I spent years editing strategy documents for a living. Not writing them — that came first. Editing them. Taking a forty-page analysis and cutting it to twenty. Taking a paragraph of five sentences and finding the one sentence that actually mattered. Taking a slide deck that said everything and making it say something.
Editing is a different skill from writing. Writing is generative — you are putting things in. Editing is subtractive — you are taking things out. And the hardest part of editing is not identifying what is weak. The hardest part is killing what is strong but unnecessary.
When I started scripting magic performances, I assumed that my consulting editing skills would transfer directly. I was half right. The principles are the same. The application is completely different. And the lesson I learned — the one that changed how I approach every script I write — came from a line in Pete McCabe’s Scripting Magic that echoes something Eugene Burger used to say: “Don’t talk so much.”
Three words. The most important editing note a performer can receive.
The First Draft Problem
Every first draft is too long. This is true in writing. It is true in consulting. It is true in magic scripting. It is a universal law of creative work: the first pass always contains more than it needs.
The reason is simple. When you write a first draft, you are thinking your way through the material. You are figuring out what you want to say as you say it. This means the draft contains your process of discovery alongside the actual content. It contains the paths you explored and abandoned. It contains the moments where you repeated yourself because you had not yet found the right formulation. It contains the asides and qualifications and hedges that reflect your uncertainty during the writing process.
All of that needs to come out.
My first mentalism script was about nine hundred words for a piece that should have been around four hundred. I did not realize this at the time. Nine hundred words felt about right for a seven-minute performance. What I did not account for was that many of those words were doing nothing. They were there because I had written them, not because the audience needed to hear them.
The Three Editing Passes
Professional writers do not edit in a single pass. They edit in layers, and each layer looks for a different category of problem. I have adapted this approach for magic scripts, and it works remarkably well.
The first pass is structural editing. You are looking at the piece as a whole. Does it build? Is the arc clear? Are the sections in the right order? Does the opening hook? Does the ending land? Are there sections that could be cut entirely without losing anything essential?
This is where you make the big cuts. Whole paragraphs. Entire sections. Lines that seemed important when you wrote them but that, on reflection, are tangential. The structural pass is where I cut the most material from my mentalism script. I had a section early on where I talked about the history of mind reading — a brief digression about how mentalists through the ages have claimed various abilities. It was interesting. It was well-written. It was completely unnecessary. The audience did not need a history lesson to appreciate the effect. The history section was there because I found it interesting, not because it served the performance.
Cut.
The second pass is line editing. You are looking at individual sentences. Is each sentence clear? Is it as short as it can be while retaining its meaning? Does it use concrete language rather than abstract language? Does it sound like speech rather than writing?
This is where you apply the economy-of-words principle. Every unnecessary word weakens the sentence it inhabits. “What I am going to do right now is ask you to think of any word at all” becomes “Think of a word. Any word.” Thirteen words become six. The meaning is the same. The impact is greater. The six-word version sounds like a person talking. The thirteen-word version sounds like a person reading.
The third pass is what I call the read-it-backward pass. You start at the last sentence and read backward, sentence by sentence. This breaks the flow of the narrative, which is exactly the point. When you read forward, the momentum of the story carries you past individual sentences. You do not notice a clunky phrase because the preceding sentence created enough momentum to coast through it. When you read backward, each sentence stands alone. There is no momentum. There is no story pulling you forward. Each sentence must justify itself in isolation.
I discovered this technique not from a magic book but from a writing manual I read years ago. The idea is that by reading backward, you hear each sentence as an isolated unit of sound and meaning. You notice things you would never notice reading forward: repeated words, awkward rhythms, unnecessary qualifiers, hedging language, throat-clearing phrases that add nothing.
The backward read is where I caught the phrase “I want you to really focus” in my script. Reading forward, it sailed past without notice. Reading backward, it stopped me. “Really” is doing nothing in that sentence. It is an intensifier that actually weakens what it modifies. “I want you to focus” is stronger. “Focus” is strongest. The backward read makes these invisible problems visible.
The Kill-Your-Darlings Principle
There is a famous piece of writing advice often attributed to William Faulkner: “Kill your darlings.” It means that the lines you are most attached to, the phrases you are most proud of, the clever turns of phrase that make you feel like a good writer — those are often the lines that need to go.
Why? Because attachment to a line is not the same as usefulness of a line. You might love a particular phrase because it was hard to write, or because it sounds impressive, or because it demonstrates your vocabulary. None of those reasons have anything to do with whether the audience needs to hear it.
I had a line in my script that I loved. It was a metaphor about thoughts being like radio signals — invisible but real, always broadcasting, detectable if you know how to tune in. I was proud of that metaphor. I had worked on it. I thought it was elegant.
It was also unnecessary. The metaphor was doing something the performance itself would do better. The audience does not need me to tell them that thoughts are invisible. They know. They do not need a metaphor to understand what mentalism claims to do. They understand the premise the moment I demonstrate it. The metaphor was me showing off my writing rather than serving my audience.
I stared at that line for a long time before I cut it. Longer than I should have. Cutting a bad line is easy. Cutting a good line that does not serve the piece is painful. But the piece was better without it. Tighter. Faster. More direct.
This is the discipline of editing. Not cutting the bad parts. Cutting the good parts that are not necessary.
The Consulting Parallel — and Where It Breaks Down
In consulting, editing serves clarity. You cut words to make the message easier to understand. You simplify language so busy executives can absorb information quickly. The goal is efficient communication.
In performance, editing serves something different. You cut words not just for clarity but for impact. A lean script hits harder than a bloated one because every remaining word carries weight. The audience senses this, even if they could not articulate it. A script with no filler feels focused, intentional, confident. A script with filler feels like the performer is not sure what matters and is hedging their bets by saying everything.
This is where my consulting instincts initially failed me. In consulting, you edit for the reader. You ask: “What does the reader need to know?” In performance, you edit for the experience. You ask: “What does the audience need to feel?”
Those are different questions, and they lead to different cuts. A consulting edit might keep an explanatory sentence because the reader needs the information. A performance edit might cut that same sentence because the information, while technically useful, slows the momentum and drains the emotional build.
The transition from one mindset to the other took me longer than I expected. I kept defaulting to the consultant’s question — “Is this clear?” — when I should have been asking the performer’s question — “Is this necessary?”
Practical Techniques
Beyond the three-pass system, there are specific techniques I use when editing scripts.
The highlighting exercise. I print the script and highlight every sentence in one of three colors. Green for lines that target a specific reaction — engagement, laughter, or astonishment. Yellow for lines that are necessary setup or instruction. Red for lines that I cannot categorize. Any line highlighted in red is a candidate for cutting. Any line highlighted in yellow is a candidate for shortening. Only the green lines earn their full length.
The word-count audit. I count the words in each section of the script and compare the counts to the relative importance of each section. If the setup section has more words than the climax section, something is wrong. The distribution of words should roughly mirror the distribution of dramatic weight.
The “say it to a friend” test. For every sentence in the script, I ask myself: would I actually say this to a friend sitting across from me? If the answer is no — if the language is too formal, too elaborate, or too performative — I rewrite it in the language I would actually use.
The one-breath test. Can you say the sentence in one breath? If not, it is probably too long for spoken delivery. Split it. Audiences process information in breath-length chunks. Give them a sentence they can absorb in one inhalation.
The Ongoing Discipline
Editing is not something you do once. It is something you do every time you revisit the script. Every time I perform a piece, I come back to the script afterward and look at it with fresh eyes. Usually I find at least one line I can cut or one phrase I can tighten.
This is a discipline, not a talent. Anyone can learn to edit ruthlessly if they are willing to let go of their attachment to their own words. The key is to remember who the script is for. It is not for you. It is not a showcase for your writing ability. It is for the audience. It exists to create an experience for them. Every word that does not contribute to that experience is friction, and friction is the enemy of performance.
“Don’t talk so much” sounds like the simplest advice in the world. In practice, it is the hardest discipline to maintain. Because you always think your words are necessary. You always think that sentence adds something. You always think the audience needs one more piece of context, one more qualification, one more setup line.
They don’t. Cut the line. Say less. Let the remaining words breathe. Let the silences do work that words cannot.
The script that survives ruthless editing is not a diminished version of the original. It is a concentrated version. Everything that was diluting the impact has been removed, and what remains is pure. Dense with meaning. Every word carrying its weight.
That is what it means to edit like a writer. Not to add polish. To remove everything that is not essential until the essential is all that remains.