Here is something that should not be true but absolutely is: the words you say before an effect have more impact on how the audience experiences that effect than the effect itself.
I know that sounds like an exaggeration. It sounds like the kind of thing someone says when they want to elevate presentation over skill. But I tested it. Deliberately. Multiple times. And the results were so consistent that they forced me to rethink the entire relationship between language and magic.
The experiment was simple. I had a mentalism piece that I performed regularly at corporate events. The effect itself was always the same — the conditions, the method, the reveal, all identical. But I varied the verbal frame that preceded it. I would perform the piece with one introduction at an event in Vienna on a Tuesday, and with a different introduction at an event in Linz on a Thursday. Same effect. Same delivery. Different words going in.
The reactions were not just different. They were categorically different. One frame produced puzzlement and applause. The other produced silence, followed by genuine astonishment. Same impossible thing. Completely different emotional experience. The only variable was the verbal frame.
That was when I understood, viscerally, what Pete McCabe means in Scripting Magic when he insists that you must write from the audience’s perspective, not the performer’s. And it connected directly to what Gustav Kuhn and Alice Pailhes explore in The Psychology of Magic — the idea that framing and expectation do not just influence perception, they constitute it. The audience does not experience the effect and then react. They experience the frame, and then the effect arrives inside that frame, and the frame determines what the effect means to them.
Two Frames for the Same Effect
Let me describe the two introductions without revealing any methods.
Frame A was what I would call the demonstration frame. I said something like, “Let me show you something I’ve been working on. I’d like you to think of something — anything at all — and I’m going to try to figure out what you’re thinking.”
Frame B was what I would call the encounter frame. I said something like, “Something has been on my mind lately. There are moments — and this happens to all of us — where you feel like you already know what someone is going to say before they say it. Not a guess. A certainty. I have been paying attention to those moments, and I want to share one with you right now.”
Read those two openings again. In Frame A, I am a performer demonstrating a skill. I have been “working on” something. I am going to “try.” The audience is positioned as judges of my attempt. They are evaluating. Can he do it? Will he succeed? They are watching from outside.
In Frame B, I am a person sharing a genuine observation about human experience. I am talking about something they have felt themselves — that eerie moment of knowing what someone will say. I am not demonstrating a skill. I am exploring a phenomenon. The audience is positioned as participants in an exploration. They are leaning in, connecting the premise to their own experience, wondering where this is going.
When the impossible revelation happened in Frame A, the audience reacted with surprise and applause. Standard magic audience response. “He did it. That was clever.”
When the exact same revelation happened in Frame B, the audience went quiet first. A beat of silence. Then a murmur. Then several people looked at each other with expressions that were not admiration but genuine discomfort — the good kind of discomfort, the kind that comes from encountering something that does not fit neatly into how you understand the world. They were not thinking, “He did it.” They were thinking, “How is that possible?”
Same effect. Same method. Same performer. Different words at the front end. Completely different experience at the back end.
Why Framing Works at the Neurological Level
This is not mystical. There is solid research behind it. The human brain does not process experiences and then interpret them. It processes experiences through pre-existing frames. What you expect to see shapes what you actually see. What you expect to feel shapes what you actually feel.
When I say “I’m going to try to figure out what you’re thinking,” the audience’s frame is: this is a demonstration of a skill. Their brain activates the analytical mode. They are watching to see if I succeed at a task. The emotional register is evaluation. The best possible outcome within this frame is admiration for a skill well demonstrated.
When I say “There are moments where you feel like you already know what someone is going to say,” the audience’s frame is: this is a shared human experience being explored. Their brain activates the experiential mode. They are not evaluating a task. They are remembering their own moments of uncanny knowing. They are emotionally invested before any method is employed. The best possible outcome within this frame is wonder — the feeling that something genuinely inexplicable has occurred.
The frame does not just color the experience. The frame is the experience. The effect is just the punctuation.
Framing Experiments I Have Run
After that initial discovery, I started experimenting deliberately with different frames for the same routines. Here are some of the patterns I found.
The “demonstration” frame always produced the lowest-ceiling reactions. “Let me show you…” or “Watch this…” or “I’m going to demonstrate…” — any language that positioned the experience as a performance of skill capped the emotional response at admiration. Which is fine, but it is not wonder.
The “personal story” frame consistently produced deeper engagement. “Something happened to me last week…” or “I have been thinking about this ever since…” or “Let me tell you about a moment that changed how I think about decisions…” — these frames made the effect feel like a natural outgrowth of a real narrative. The audience was engaged with the story, and the impossible moment arrived as a surprise within a story they were already invested in.
The “shared experience” frame was the most powerful for mentalism. “You have probably noticed…” or “We have all had the experience of…” or “Think about the last time you just knew something was going to happen…” — these frames created personal resonance before the effect even began. The audience was not watching someone do something. They were experiencing something that connected to their own lives.
The “philosophical question” frame worked particularly well in keynote contexts. “What would it mean if we could actually read the room before anyone speaks?” or “I have a question that I cannot answer, and I think the answer might be in this room.” These frames elevated the effect from entertainment to exploration. The audience felt they were participating in an inquiry, not watching a show.
The Trap of the Performer’s Perspective
Why do most performers default to demonstration framing? Because that is how we learn effects. We learn them as things to do. The instructional video says, “Here’s the effect: you ask someone to think of a card, and then you reveal it.” We internalize the effect as a task we perform. And then, on stage, we present it exactly that way — as a task we are performing for the audience.
This is writing from the performer’s perspective. I am doing something. You are watching me do it. The relationship is one-directional.
The shift that changed everything for me was learning to write from the audience’s perspective. Not “What am I doing?” but “What is the audience experiencing?” Not “I reveal the card” but “They discover, in a moment that defies explanation, that a stranger knew something he should not possibly have known.”
When you write from the audience’s perspective, the framing changes automatically. Because from the audience’s perspective, the interesting thing is not that a performer is demonstrating a skill. The interesting thing is that something impossible just happened in their reality. They were holding the cards. They made the choice. Nothing was forced. And yet the outcome was predicted.
The audience’s perspective makes the effect about them, not about you. And effects that are about the audience create fundamentally different emotional responses than effects that are about the performer.
Practical Application: The Pre-Frame Audit
I now run every script through what I call a pre-frame audit. Before I finalize any routine, I look at everything I say before the first moment of impossibility and ask three questions.
First: Does my language position this as a demonstration or an experience? If it sounds like “Watch me do something skillful,” I rewrite it until it sounds like “Let us explore something together.”
Second: Does my language connect to the audience’s world or only to mine? If the frame references my skills, my practice, my abilities, it is performer-centric. If it references feelings, experiences, or questions that the audience recognizes from their own lives, it is audience-centric.
Third: Does my language leave room for the impossible, or does it predict it? If I say “I’m going to read your mind,” the audience knows what is coming. There is no surprise in the structure — only in the execution. If I say “Something strange is about to happen that neither of us can fully explain,” the structure itself is a mystery. The audience does not know what form the impossible will take, which means the reveal has double impact: the surprise of the content and the surprise of the form.
The Compounding Effect
What I have found over months of deliberate frame testing is that the impact compounds across a show. If every effect in a set is introduced with audience-centric, experiential framing, the cumulative effect is not just better reactions to individual effects. It is a fundamentally different show experience. The audience feels like they have been on a journey, not watched a series of demonstrations. They leave talking about how the experience felt, not about how the tricks worked.
This is the difference between a show people remember and a show people applaud and then forget by the time they reach the parking lot.
I once overheard two audience members after a keynote event in Salzburg. One said, “That thing he did with the envelope — how did he do that?” The other said, “I don’t even care how he did it. The whole thing just felt… real.” That second response — “it felt real” — is the product of framing. The effect was the same one that, with different framing, would have produced only the first response.
The words you use before the magic happens are not the warmup. They are not the prelude. They are not the context. They are the experience. The effect is just the proof that the experience was genuine.
Every word you say before the impossible moment is an instruction to the audience’s brain about how to process what is about to happen. Choose those words carefully, and the impossible becomes more than surprising. It becomes meaningful.
Choose them carelessly, and the best effect in the world is just a really good trick.