This is the two hundred and fiftieth post I have written for this blog. That number surprised me when I noticed it. Two hundred and fifty posts about the journey from a strategy consultant sitting in a hotel room with a deck of cards to wherever I am now — still learning, still editing, still discovering how much I did not know about a craft I fell into by accident.
And it is fitting that post two hundred and fifty lands here, at the end of the Language Skills section, because if there is one principle that contains all the others — one idea that sits at the center of everything I have written about scripting, delivery, word choice, and the power of language in performance — it is this:
Every sentence must earn its right to exist.
Not every paragraph. Not every section. Every sentence. If a sentence does not serve the audience’s experience, it does not belong in your script, no matter how clever it is, no matter how long you have been saying it, no matter how comfortable it feels in your mouth. Cut it.
This is the hardest discipline in performance. And it is the one that separates scripts that work from scripts that almost work.
Where This Principle Comes From
Ken Weber puts it with characteristic bluntness in Maximum Entertainment: “If I’m not enthralled, amused, or amazed… I’m on my way to being bored.” Those are the three audience states that matter — rapt attention, laughter, astonishment. Weber calls them the Big Three reactions, and his argument is that every moment of your show should target at least one of them.
Pete McCabe, in Scripting Magic, approaches the same idea from the writer’s side: economy of words. Not the fewest words possible, but the right number of words — and only the right words. Every line serves a function. Every function is essential. If you cannot name the function a sentence performs, you cannot justify its existence.
These two frameworks converged in my head about a year ago and produced the editorial filter that now governs everything I script. I call it the earn-it test. Every sentence gets asked three questions. If it cannot answer at least one of them with a clear yes, it gets cut.
The Three Questions
Question one: Does this sentence target one of the Big Three reactions? Is it designed to create rapt attention, generate laughter, or set up or deliver astonishment? Not accidentally. Deliberately. If I cannot articulate which of the three reactions this sentence is targeting, it is not targeting any of them. It is just existing. Existence is not enough.
Question two: Does this sentence advance the narrative? Not the method. Not the procedure. The narrative. The story that the audience is following. If I am building toward a climax, each sentence should be a step closer to that climax. If a sentence does not move the narrative forward, it is a pause. And pauses are only justified when they are strategic — a beat of silence, a moment for the audience to absorb. Verbal pauses — sentences that fill time without advancing the story — are not strategic. They are waste.
Question three: Does this sentence build character? Performance is not just about what happens. It is about who it happens to. The audience needs to know who I am. They need to see my personality, my perspective, my humanity. Sentences that reveal character — humor, vulnerability, specificity, opinion — earn their place even if they do not directly advance the plot or target a Big Three reaction. A line that makes the audience feel like they know me better is a line that deepens the overall experience.
Three questions. One yes is enough. Zero yeses and the sentence goes.
What I Found When I Applied This Filter
The first time I ran my full thirty-minute set through the earn-it test, I cut roughly twenty percent of the material. Twenty percent. That is six minutes of a thirty-minute show that was not earning its place.
Some of what I cut was obvious. Transitional filler I had been saying out of habit. “So, moving on…” and “What I want to do next is…” and “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen.” These phrases are the verbal equivalent of clearing your throat. They signal a transition without contributing anything to the audience’s experience.
Some of what I cut was less obvious. There were sentences I genuinely liked — phrases I thought were well-crafted, metaphors I was proud of, asides that I found personally amusing. But when I held them to the three questions, they could not answer any of them. They were not targeting a reaction. They were not advancing the narrative. They were not building character. They were just… good sentences sitting in the wrong context.
This was the painful discovery. Being a good sentence is not the same as being a useful sentence. A beautifully written line that does not serve the performance is like a beautiful painting hung in a hallway no one walks through. It might be excellent in isolation. In context, it is invisible at best and a distraction at worst.
The Accumulation Problem
One unnecessary sentence does not ruin a show. Two do not either. The damage is cumulative. It is what happens when ten unnecessary sentences, spread across a thirty-minute performance, each sap a tiny fraction of the audience’s engagement.
The audience does not notice any individual unnecessary sentence. They notice the feeling of the whole show. And ten unnecessary sentences — even short ones, even pleasant ones — create a cumulative drag. The show feels slightly long. Slightly unfocused. Slightly less than what it should be. Not bad. Just not as good as it could be. And the performer never knows, because nobody walks up afterward and says, “Your show would be better if you cut ten specific sentences.”
This is why the earn-it test has to be ruthless. Because the individual casualties are invisible. Only the aggregate effect is visible. And by the time you notice the aggregate effect — slightly flatter reactions, slightly shorter applause, slightly fewer post-show comments from audience members — you have no idea which sentences are responsible.
So you test them all. Every one. And you cut the ones that cannot justify themselves.
Necessary Instructions: The Exception That Proves the Rule
There is a category of sentences that does not target any of the Big Three reactions but is still necessary: instructions and procedural language. “Please take a card.” “Shuffle the deck for me.” “Write something down on this paper.” These sentences are the mechanical infrastructure of the effect. They need to exist. The volunteer needs to know what to do.
But even these sentences can be optimized. The question is not “Can I eliminate this instruction?” It is “Can I deliver this instruction in a way that also serves one of the three questions?”
“Please take a card” is purely procedural. “Pick any card — and I mean that, any card in the entire deck, no restrictions” is procedural and it builds the conditions of impossibility, which creates rapt attention. Same instruction. Different sentence. One earns its place on two levels. The other earns it on only one.
Over time, I converted almost all of my purely procedural sentences into sentences that serve double duty. The instruction is still there. The volunteer still knows what to do. But the sentence is also doing something else — building mystery, creating anticipation, establishing character, or generating a small laugh.
This is the compression principle in action. Not fewer sentences, but denser sentences. Every line carrying more weight. Every moment on stage doing more work.
The Journey from Accidental to Deliberate Language
When I look back at the twenty posts in this Language Skills section, they trace a single arc: from accidental language to deliberate language.
I started magic using the words that came naturally. The words I heard in tutorial videos. The words that other performers used. The words that filled the silence when I was nervous. Language was something that happened during my performance. It was not something I designed.
Then I discovered scripting, and language became something I wrote down in advance. A plan. A structure. Better than accidental, but still mostly focused on what I needed to say to get through the routine without stumbling.
Then I discovered the Big Three reactions, and language became something I targeted. Each line aimed at a specific response. The script stopped being a plan for me and started being a design for the audience.
Then I discovered framing, and language became the architecture of the experience. The words before the effect shaped how the audience received the effect. Language was no longer just what I said during the magic. It was the context that determined what the magic meant.
Then I discovered impossibility intensifiers, and language became a tool for amplifying the extraordinary. Specific words placed at specific moments to make the impossible feel more impossible.
Then I discovered economy, and language became a discipline of precision. Not the most words. Not the fewest words. The right words. And only the right words.
Each of these discoveries built on the last. And the capstone — the principle that contains all of them — is the earn-it test. Because whether a sentence is targeting a reaction, framing an experience, intensifying impossibility, or building character, the underlying question is the same: does this sentence earn its right to exist in this performance?
If yes, it stays. If no, it goes. Regardless of how much I like it. Regardless of how long I have been saying it. Regardless of how clever I think it is.
The Broader Principle
This applies far beyond magic. In every communication context I operate in — keynote speaking, business presentations, even conversations with my team at Vulpine Creations — the earn-it principle holds. Every sentence in a presentation should be earning its place. Every slide. Every bullet point. Every aside. If it does not serve the audience, it is diluting the experience.
The discipline of asking “Does this earn its place?” is uncomfortable. It requires you to look at your own work with the eyes of a stranger, to strip away the emotional attachment to phrases you love, and to make decisions based entirely on whether the audience is served.
But the result is work that respects the audience’s time and attention. Work that is tight without being skeletal, rich without being bloated, precise without being cold. Work that feels effortless because every unnecessary element has been removed, leaving only the elements that carry weight.
The End of the Arc, Not the End of the Work
This is the last post in the Language Skills section. Twenty posts on words, phrases, framing, delivery, economy, and the earn-it test. The journey from “I’ll just say what comes to mind” to “every sentence is a deliberate choice” has been one of the most transformative arcs in my entire magic education.
But I want to be honest about where I am. I am not at the end. I am at the point where I understand the principles and apply them with increasing consistency. I still catch myself saying unnecessary sentences. I still find fat in my scripts during review. I still default to verbal filler when I am nervous.
The difference is that now I know what I am listening for. I have the filter. I have the three questions. I have the vocabulary to diagnose problems and the discipline to fix them. The gap between knowing the standard and consistently meeting it is the gap that practice closes over time. I am in that gap. Closing it. Slowly.
Two hundred and fifty posts in. Five hundred and fifty to go. The next section moves into new territory, and I am looking forward to it the way I always look forward to the next challenge — with the knowledge that I will discover, once again, how much I do not yet know.
Every sentence earns its place. That is the principle. Apply it to your scripts. Apply it to your presentations. Apply it to your conversations. The unnecessary words are not just clutter. They are barriers between you and the person you are trying to reach.
Remove the barriers. Keep only what earns its right to exist. And watch how much more powerfully the remaining words land.
That is the lesson. That is the discipline. And it is the one I will keep practicing for as long as I keep performing.