I performed at a private event in Salzburg about two years ago — one of those corporate holiday gatherings where the audience is half-engaged, half-distracted by the open bar. The set went fine. Not great. Fine. Nobody booed. Nobody walked out. But nobody was spellbound, either. It was the kind of performance that earns polite applause and is forgotten by the time the dessert arrives.
Afterward, I asked a friend in the audience — a fellow performer who had come along as a guest — for honest feedback. He paused, tilted his head, and delivered the single most useless sentence in the history of creative advice.
“You just need to make it more entertaining.”
I stared at him. Make it more entertaining. I wanted to ask: how? What, specifically, should I change? Which moment fell flat? Which line needed work? Which transition lost the audience? What does “more entertaining” look like in concrete, actionable terms?
But I did not ask, because I already knew what the answer would be. The answer would be some variation of “just add more personality” or “be yourself” or “connect with the audience more” — which are just different ways of saying “make it more entertaining” with different words. It is advice that describes the destination without offering a single direction for how to get there.
And for a long time, I accepted this kind of feedback as if it were meaningful. I would nod, go back to my hotel room, and sit on the edge of the bed wondering how, exactly, one “makes it more entertaining.” It felt like being told to “just be taller” or “just be funnier.” Sure. I would love to. How?
The Landscape of Vague Advice
Once I started noticing this pattern, I saw it everywhere. In magic forums. In feedback sessions. In lectures and workshops. In conversations between performers at conventions. The advice floated in the same vague cloud, never touching the ground.
“Add more personality.”
“Make it more fun.”
“Connect with the audience.”
“Be yourself up there.”
“Just relax and enjoy it.”
“Show them who you are.”
Every one of these statements sounds wise. Every one of them sounds like it comes from a place of experience and knowledge. And every single one of them is functionally useless to someone who does not already know how to do what they describe.
Telling a struggling performer to “add more personality” is like telling a struggling swimmer to “just swim better.” The swimmer knows they need to swim better. That is why they are struggling. What they need is someone to say: “Your left arm is entering the water at the wrong angle. Adjust your elbow by fifteen degrees and keep your fingers together during the pull phase.” That is actionable. That is useful. That is the difference between a coach and a spectator.
The magic world, I discovered, is full of spectators disguised as coaches. People who can identify that something is wrong but cannot diagnose what, specifically, is wrong, and therefore default to the generic “make it more entertaining” because it sounds knowledgeable without requiring any actual knowledge.
When I Found the Tools
The turning point came when I picked up Pete McCabe’s Scripting Magic. And what hit me was not a grand philosophical insight. It was the specificity.
McCabe does not tell you to “be more entertaining.” He tells you exactly how to make your scripted words do specific things. He provides concrete techniques for writing lines that create moments. Techniques for building anticipation through sentence structure. Techniques for using the audience’s perspective as the organizing principle of your script. Techniques for identifying which words are earning their keep and which are dead weight.
It was like being handed a toolkit after years of being told to “just build something.” The vagueness evaporated. Suddenly I had specific moves I could make. Specific principles I could apply. Specific tests I could run on my own material to determine whether it was working and why.
Around the same time, I encountered Dan Harlan’s lecture on magic as theater, where he lays out the six functions of dialogue. Every line you speak in performance, Harlan argues, should serve at least one of six specific functions: providing information, revealing character, directing attention, revealing theme, establishing the level of reality, or establishing tempo.
Six functions. Named. Defined. Testable.
I could take any line from my script and ask: which function is this line serving? If the answer was “none of them,” the line was dead weight. If the answer was “information,” I could ask whether that information was necessary and whether it could be delivered in fewer words. If the answer was “directing attention,” I could ask whether the audience’s attention actually needed to be directed at that moment.
This was the opposite of “make it more entertaining.” This was a diagnostic framework. A checklist. A set of specific questions I could apply to every sentence in my script and get a specific answer about whether that sentence was pulling its weight.
The Difference Between Philosophy and Technique
I want to be fair to the people who gave me vague advice. They were not wrong that my performances needed more entertainment value. They were not wrong that I needed more personality, more connection, more fun. The diagnosis was correct. The prescription was missing.
And I think the reason the prescription was missing is that most performers learn their craft through experience rather than through explicit technique. They absorb principles through years of performing and watching others perform. They develop an intuition for what works and what does not. But because they learned intuitively rather than explicitly, they cannot articulate what they know. They can feel that something is wrong, but they cannot name it. And when they try to help, they default to philosophy because they do not have the vocabulary for technique.
“Be more entertaining” is a philosophy. It is a correct philosophy. But it is not a technique.
“Rewrite this line so that it serves the function of directing attention rather than just conveying information” — that is a technique. It is specific. It is actionable. It tells you what to do and how to evaluate whether you have done it successfully.
The shift from philosophy to technique was the single biggest upgrade in my development as a performer. Not because the philosophy was wrong, but because the philosophy alone was not enough to change anything. I needed tools. Specific tools. Screwdrivers and wrenches, not motivational posters.
What Specific Scripting Gave Me
Let me give you a concrete example of the difference.
I had a line in one of my mentalism pieces that went: “Now I’m going to try to read your mind.” That is a perfectly fine line. It communicates what is about to happen. But when I ran it through the six functions framework, I realized it was doing only one thing: providing information. And not even necessary information, since the audience already knew this was a mentalism show.
The line was not revealing character. It was not directing attention anywhere specific. It was not establishing theme or tone. It was not creating tempo. It was a one-dimensional line doing one low-value job.
So I rewrote it: “Here is where it gets interesting. You made a choice. Nobody influenced you. Nobody told you what to think. At least… that is what we are going to find out.”
Same moment in the performance. Same position in the script. But the rewritten version is doing four things simultaneously. It is directing attention (to the choice the volunteer made). It is revealing character (confident, slightly provocative). It is establishing theme (the question of free will versus influence). And it is creating tempo (the pause before “at least” creates a beat of tension, and “that is what we are going to find out” accelerates the audience toward what comes next).
Four functions instead of one. More engaging, more interesting, more entertaining — but not because I willed it to be more entertaining. Because I had a framework that told me exactly what to change and how.
That is what specific technique gives you. It turns “make it more entertaining” from a wish into a process.
The Danger of Vague Advice
There is one more thing I want to say about this, and it is not charitable, but I believe it is true. Vague advice is not just unhelpful. It can be actively harmful.
When someone tells you to “just be more entertaining” and you do not know how, you start guessing. You try adding jokes that do not fit your character. You try being louder. You try being broader. You try imitating performers who are nothing like you. You thrash around in the dark, making changes without understanding what you are changing or why.
And sometimes, in the thrashing, you lose what was already working. You had moments in your performance that were genuine and effective, but because the feedback was so vague — “more entertaining” covers everything — you changed those moments too. You over-corrected. You moved further from your natural voice instead of closer to it.
Specific feedback prevents this. When someone tells you that one specific line is serving only one function and could be rewritten to serve three, you change that line and leave everything else alone. The fix is surgical. The improvement is targeted. And the things that were already working remain untouched.
What I Tell People Now
When someone asks me for feedback on their performance, I try very hard to never say “make it more entertaining.” I try to name the specific moment that did not work and offer a specific reason why. Not always successfully — sometimes I fall back into vagueness too. But I try.
And when someone gives me vague feedback, I no longer nod and wonder what it means. I ask follow-up questions. “Which part specifically?” “What did you feel at that moment?” “Was there a point where your attention wandered?” I dig until I find something specific enough to act on.
Because the truth is, every performer already wants to be more entertaining. Every performer already wants to connect with the audience, add personality, and make it fun. That desire was never the problem. The problem was always the how. And the how lives in specific tools, specific frameworks, and specific techniques that turn vague aspiration into concrete improvement.
Nobody needs to be told to be more entertaining. Everybody needs to be shown how.