Pete McCabe makes an observation in Scripting Magic that I initially dismissed as a small point and later realized was one of the most important ideas in the entire book. He illustrates it with a deceptively simple example: the difference between “there was a card” and “there were a card.”
Same sentence. Same meaning. Same information conveyed. But the character saying each version is a completely different person. “There was a card” is standard, educated, neutral. “There were a card” is colloquial, informal, working-class, and loaded with personality. The speaker of the second version has a background, a social context, a way of moving through the world that is communicated entirely through a single word choice. Were instead of was. That is all it takes.
McCabe’s point is not about grammar. His point is that every word in your script is a character choice. Every sentence you speak on stage tells the audience not just what you are saying but who you are. Word selection, sentence structure, rhythm, register — all of these communicate identity. And most performers, including me, have never thought about it.
I read this on a quiet evening in a hotel room in Innsbruck. I had been working on revising a script, and I had been focused on what I was saying — the content, the logic, the information. McCabe’s observation shifted my focus to how I was saying it. And that shift exposed something I had been blind to: my consulting vocabulary was shaping my stage character in ways I had not intended and did not fully want.
The Consultant on Stage
Here is the thing about spending fifteen years as a strategy consultant: the language gets into your bones. You do not just learn the vocabulary — you internalize the syntax, the sentence structures, the rhythms of professional communication. You start to think in frameworks. You speak in organized paragraphs. You use words like “leverage” and “optimize” and “strategic alignment” without noticing.
This language served me well in boardrooms. It communicated competence, education, and authority. It signaled that I belonged in rooms where decisions were made, that I could be trusted with complex problems, that I understood the frameworks that the people around the table used to make sense of their world.
On stage, this same language created a character I had not chosen. The audience heard a consultant. They heard someone who was educated, precise, and analytical. They heard someone who organized ideas logically and expressed them clearly. All of this was fine — it was consistent with the persona I had been developing. But they also heard something else: distance.
The consultant’s language is inherently distancing. It creates a gap between speaker and listener that says: I am the expert, you are the client. I have the answers, you have the questions. I am up here, you are out there. In a consulting context, this gap is appropriate — the client is paying for expertise, and the language signals that the expertise is real. In a performance context, this gap is a problem, because performance requires connection, not authority.
I was creating authority at the expense of connection. And I was doing it through word choice, sentence by sentence, without realizing it.
The Forensic Audit
After reading McCabe’s observation, I did something I had never done before: I transcribed one of my performances. I recorded a show at a corporate event in Vienna, then sat in my hotel room the next morning and typed out every word I had said, exactly as I had said it.
Reading the transcript was revelatory. On stage, the performance had felt natural, conversational, connected. On paper, it read like a TED talk delivered by a management consultant. The sentences were long and complex. The vocabulary was elevated. The tone was explanatory rather than conversational. I used phrases like “what this demonstrates” and “the underlying principle here” and “if we think about this systematically.” I structured my patter the way I would structure a client presentation: premise, evidence, conclusion.
Nobody talks like that in real life. Nobody sits down with a friend at a coffee shop and says “the underlying principle here is that perception is fundamentally constructive.” People say “the weird thing is, your brain basically makes stuff up.” Same idea. Completely different character.
The transcript showed me a person who was smart, organized, and slightly insufferable. Not because the ideas were wrong — they were fine — but because the language was performing intelligence rather than communicating naturally. Every sentence was optimized for clarity and precision, which sounds like a virtue until you realize that natural human conversation is not clear or precise. It is messy, fragmented, interrupted, and full of verbal habits that signal personality rather than competence.
The Small Words
McCabe’s insight about “were” versus “was” led me to start paying attention to the smallest words in my scripts. Not the big words — I knew those needed attention. The small ones. The connective tissue. The words that most people never think about but that, collectively, define the voice speaking them.
For example: “however.” I used “however” on stage the way I used it in consulting presentations — as a formal transition between contrasting ideas. “The card could be anywhere in the deck. However, if my theory is correct…” That “however” is a consultant’s word. It is formal, deliberate, and slightly stiff. A real person, telling a real story to a friend, would say “but.” Or they would not use a transition at all — they would just pivot. “The card could be anywhere. But here’s the thing…”
Another example: “essentially.” I used “essentially” as a verbal buffer, the way consultants use it to soften assertions. “What’s happening here is essentially a test of intuition.” A real person would say “basically.” Or better: “This is a test of intuition.” No buffer needed. The buffer communicates caution, precision, hedge. It communicates consultant. It does not communicate a person talking to other people about something they find genuinely exciting.
A third example: “demonstrate.” “Let me demonstrate something.” Consultants demonstrate. Teachers demonstrate. Performers should not demonstrate — they should show, or do, or try. “Let me demonstrate something” frames the interaction as a presentation. “Let me show you something” frames it as a conversation. “Let me try something” frames it as an experiment. Same action. Three different characters. Three different relationships with the audience.
Each of these changes is tiny. Individually, none of them would be noticed by the audience. But collectively — across an entire thirty-minute show, across hundreds of word choices — they define who the audience thinks they are watching. And the person they were watching, before I made these changes, was a consultant giving a presentation with magic in it. The person I wanted them to watch was a fascinating, slightly obsessive person sharing something he could not stop thinking about.
The Austrian Factor
There is an additional layer to this that is specific to my situation. I perform primarily in Austria, often in German, sometimes in English. My English carries an Austrian accent that I cannot and do not want to eliminate. But beyond the accent, there are patterns in how Austrian-English speakers construct sentences that are different from native English patterns.
Austrian speakers tend to construct longer, more complex sentences — influenced by German syntax, where subordinate clauses nest inside each other like Russian dolls. We tend to place important information at the end of sentences rather than the beginning. We tend to use more formal registers by default, because Austrian German distinguishes more sharply between formal and informal speech than English does.
All of these tendencies reinforced the consultant character that I was trying to soften. My sentence length, my syntax, my default register — all of them were working against the conversational, human, accessible persona I was trying to build.
The fix was not to pretend I was not Austrian. The fix was to become aware of the specific ways my linguistic background was shaping my stage character and to consciously adjust the elements that were working against me while keeping the ones that were working for me.
Shorter sentences. That was the single biggest change. I went through my scripts and broke long sentences into short ones. Where I had written “What I find fascinating about this particular area of psychological research is that it suggests our decisions are made before we’re consciously aware of making them,” I rewrote it as “Here’s what’s fascinating. Your brain makes the decision before you know you’ve made it.” Same content. Half the length. A completely different person speaking.
The Intentional Voice
McCabe’s deeper point — the one beneath the “were” versus “was” example — is that your scripted voice should be intentional. Not accidental. Not default. Chosen. Every word should be there because you decided it should be there, because it communicates something specific about who you are on stage.
This does not mean scripting every syllable with robotic precision. It means being aware of the patterns in your speech and making deliberate decisions about which patterns serve your persona and which ones undermine it. It means reading your scripts not just for content but for character. It means asking, with every sentence: who is the person speaking this line?
I developed a practice for this. After writing or revising a script, I read it aloud in my hotel room and listen — not for the content, but for the character. Who do I hear? Do I hear a consultant? A teacher? A friend? An expert? An enthusiast? If I hear a character I do not want, I identify the specific words and structures that are creating that character and I change them.
Sometimes the change is a single word. Replacing “demonstrate” with “show.” Replacing “essentially” with “basically” or deleting it entirely. Replacing “however” with “but.” These are not creative decisions — they are character decisions. The creative content remains the same. The character delivering it shifts.
Sometimes the change is structural. Breaking a complex sentence into two simple ones. Moving the interesting information from the end of the sentence to the beginning. Replacing a declarative statement with a question. “Your brain processes visual information in two distinct phases” becomes “Did you know your brain processes what you see in two stages?” Same information. One lectures. The other converses.
What My Vocabulary Reveals
After months of this work, I have come to appreciate something that McCabe implies but does not state explicitly: your vocabulary on stage reveals not just your character but your relationship with the audience.
Formal vocabulary creates a hierarchical relationship. The speaker is above the listener. The speaker knows things the listener does not. The speaker is explaining, and the listener is being explained to. This relationship can work — for a teacher, a preacher, a keynote speaker delivering information. But for a performer seeking connection, it is counterproductive.
Informal vocabulary creates a lateral relationship. The speaker is beside the listener. They are equals. The speaker is sharing, not explaining. The listener is participating, not receiving. This relationship is what performance requires, because performance is a collaboration between performer and audience, not a delivery from one to the other.
My consulting vocabulary was creating a hierarchical relationship on stage. The audience was positioned as the recipient of my expertise, not as a participant in a shared experience. And that positioning, created word by word through hundreds of micro-choices I had never consciously made, was the invisible barrier between my performance and the connection I wanted to create.
Every script revision I do now includes a vocabulary pass. I read the script specifically for words and structures that create hierarchy, and I replace them with words and structures that create equality. It is painstaking work. It is invisible to the audience — they will never know I changed “demonstrate” to “try” or broke a forty-word sentence into two fifteen-word sentences. But the cumulative effect of these invisible changes is a character they want to listen to, a voice they want to hear, and a relationship they want to be part of.
A single word. Were instead of was. Demonstrate instead of try. However instead of but. The character lives in these choices. And the performer’s job is to make them deliberately, not by default.
McCabe gave me the lens. The work of looking through it — at every word, in every script, for every performance — is mine. And it never ends.