I have a habit of recording my practice sessions. Not always video — sometimes just audio. I prop my phone on the hotel desk, hit record, and run through a routine with full patter as if an audience were sitting across from me. Then I listen back the next morning, usually while packing for the next meeting.
One morning in a hotel in Salzburg, I was listening to a run-through of a mentalism piece I had been developing. The effect involved a spectator making a series of choices, and the finale depended on the audience understanding exactly what those choices were. In performance, the reveal should be crystal clear — the audience should gasp because they fully comprehend what just happened.
But as I listened, I heard something that stopped me mid-packing.
During the critical setup phase, where I needed the audience focused on the spectator’s choices, my patter was directing their attention to me. I was saying things like “I want you to watch carefully” and “pay close attention to what I am doing” and “notice my hands are not touching anything.” Every sentence had the word “I” in it. Every instruction pointed the audience’s eyes at me. The spectator — the person whose choices were the entire foundation of the effect — was being linguistically abandoned.
I was telling them where to look. And I was telling them to look at the wrong thing.
The Third Tool
Patter is the third of the eight tools of attention control, and its function is more precise than most performers realize. The principle sounds deceptively simple: they look where you tell them to look. Say “watch the card” and they look at the card. Say “look at her face” and they look at the spectator’s face. Say “think about what you chose” and their attention shifts inward, toward memory.
Every sentence you speak during a performance is a visual instruction. Not metaphorically. Literally. Your words are moving the audience’s eyes.
Darwin Ortiz identifies patter as one of the eight specific mechanisms that control where an audience looks, and what struck me when I first encountered this framework in Strong Magic was how technical the insight is. This is not “have better patter” or “write engaging scripts.” This is something more precise: every word you say is a directional signal, and you need to know where each signal is pointing.
The Mapping Exercise
The exercise that changed my understanding of patter was tedious but revelatory. I wrote out the complete script of one of my routines — every word, every pause, every aside. In a column next to each line, I wrote where I wanted the audience looking during that line. In a third column, I wrote where my patter was actually directing them.
The misalignments were everywhere.
During one moment where I wanted the audience watching the spectator’s reaction, my patter was: “And now the card has changed.” The audience, obediently following my verbal instruction, looked at the card. They missed the spectator’s face — which was, in that moment, the most valuable thing in the room. The spectator’s reaction was the real payoff. My words threw it away.
During another moment designed for a scripted pause and a laugh, my preceding line was “Take a look at the cards in your hand.” The audience dutifully looked at the spectator’s hands. By the time they looked back at me, the pause had passed and the laugh line landed flat.
During a third moment meant to build suspense, my patter was a neutral transitional sentence that gave the audience no clear visual target at all. Their eyes drifted. Some looked at the props. Some looked at me. The room’s attention fragmented, and the suspense never built because suspense requires unified focus.
One routine. Dozens of misalignments. I had been performing this routine for months, wondering why certain moments underperformed.
Words as Spotlights
The analogy I use now is a spotlight. A lighting designer does not flood the stage with light. They aim specific beams at specific points at specific moments. When the action is at center stage, the light goes there. When it moves stage left, the spotlight follows. The audience’s eyes follow the light because the lit area is where the information lives.
Your patter is a verbal spotlight. Every sentence aims it somewhere. The question is whether you are aiming it consciously or letting it swing around randomly.
“Watch what happens” — spotlight on the effect. “Think about what you just said” — spotlight on the spectator’s memory. “Now, I have no idea how this is going to end” — spotlight on you, your face, your expression. “Listen” — spotlight suspended, attention heightened, waiting for the next instruction.
Each phrase moves the audience’s visual attention to a specific target. And because verbal instruction operates through conscious processing — it overrides the ambient scanning behavior that the audience defaults to when left unguided — they follow with remarkable consistency.
The Consultant’s Accidental Discovery
I should have understood this principle earlier, because I had been using it for years in a completely different context.
In my consulting work, I facilitate strategy workshops and corporate sessions. One of the recurring challenges in facilitation is keeping a group of smart, opinionated people focused on the same question at the same time. If the conversation drifts, you end up with twelve people thinking about twelve different things, and the session produces nothing.
The tool that fixes this is verbal framing. You say, “Right now, I want everyone to focus on one question: What is the biggest risk to our timeline?” And the room focuses. Not because they are obedient, but because you have given their attention a specific target. You have named the thing they should be thinking about, and naming it directs them there.
The reverse is equally powerful. If I say “Let’s not worry about budget right now,” I have just made everyone think about budget. The negation does not negate the direction. The word “budget” is a target, and the audience’s attention lands on it regardless of the “don’t” that precedes it.
I had been making this exact mistake in my performances. “Don’t worry about the other cards” — which immediately makes the audience worry about the other cards. “Ignore what is on the table” — which makes them stare at the table. “I am not doing anything tricky” — which makes them suspect I am doing something tricky.
Every negation was a spotlight aimed at the thing I wanted to keep in the dark.
The Verb Problem
Here is a practical detail that took me months to figure out: the verbs you use matter more than the nouns.
“Watch the card” and “think about the card” are both about the card, but they direct attention differently. “Watch” is visual — it tells the audience to look with their eyes. “Think about” is cognitive — it directs attention inward, toward memory and consideration. You can say “think about the card you chose” while the card is nowhere in sight, and the audience’s attention turns inward. Their eyes unfocus slightly. They stop scanning your hands.
This distinction is enormously useful for mentalism, which makes up a large part of what I perform now. In mentalism, much of the effect is cognitive rather than visual. The audience needs to be thinking, not looking. If I say “look at” during a moment when I need the audience inside their own heads, I pull them out of the cognitive space where the effect lives. If I say “remember” or “picture in your mind” or “concentrate on,” I push them deeper into that space.
The shift is subtle, but the difference in audience behavior is visible on recordings. When I use cognitive verbs, the audience’s eyes soften and drift. They are no longer scanning my hands or the props. When I use visual verbs, their eyes sharpen and lock on. Matching the verb type to the attention mode I need is now one of the first things I consider when scripting.
Alignment with the Other Tools
In my previous posts on eye contact and body language, I described how each tool gains its real power through alignment. Patter follows the same principle. A verbal instruction that aligns with your gaze and body orientation is almost irresistible. If you say “look at the card” while looking at the card yourself, while your body faces the card, the audience receives three simultaneous signals all pointing to the same target. They have no choice but to follow.
If even one signal contradicts the others, the direction weakens. “Look at the card” with your eyes on the audience and your body angled away creates a conflicted signal. Some people follow your words. Some follow your eyes. The audience splits, and the moment loses force.
This is why I now script patter and body orientation together as a single integrated plan. For every line, I know where my eyes will be and where my body will face. The three tools move in concert, shifting from target to target as the routine progresses.
The moments of deliberate contradiction are scripted too. There are places in certain routines where I want the audience to feel a subtle tension — a sense that something is off. In those moments, I intentionally misalign one tool to create the effect. But this is planned tension, not accidental confusion.
The Silence Tool
One more dimension of patter as attention control: silence.
When you stop talking, the audience’s attention becomes untethered from verbal instruction. Without a spoken directive, their eyes default to whatever is most visually active — movement, contrast, newness. If nothing is particularly active, their eyes drift to your face, waiting for the next cue.
This means silence is not the absence of attention control. It is a handoff. When you stop speaking, you are passing the spotlight to the other tools. If you are moving during a silence, the audience follows the movement. If you are still, they study your face. If something new has appeared, they examine it.
I used to pause for dramatic effect without thinking about what the audience was doing during the pause. Now I plan the pause. The moment I stop talking, the audience’s eyes are going to go somewhere. I use stillness, gaze direction, and body orientation to ensure they go where I want.
A well-placed silence with a well-aimed gaze is as powerful as any sentence. Sometimes more powerful, because the absence of words creates a sense of significance. The audience reads the silence as: what is happening right now is too important for words.
The Script Is a Score
I think of my patter differently now than I did a few years ago. It is not a text. It is a score. Every line is not just words to be spoken — it is an instruction about where the audience should be looking, what they should be thinking, and how their attention should be organized in that specific moment.
When I rewrite a line, I am not just making it sound better. I am re-aiming the spotlight. When I add a pause, I am creating a moment where the other tools take over. When I cut a line, I am removing a spotlight swing that was aimed at nothing.
This is what it means to treat patter as a tool of attention control rather than as entertainment filler. Every word earns its place not just by being interesting but by doing a specific job in the choreography of the audience’s attention.
They look where you tell them to look. The only question is whether you know what you are telling them.