For the first two years of my performing life, I oscillated between two extremes. Sometimes I would write a complete script and memorize it word for word. The result was clean, polished, and lifeless. I sounded like a news anchor reading a teleprompter — technically proficient but emotionally absent. The words were coming from my memory, not from me.
Other times, I would throw away the script entirely and improvise. The result was authentic, energetic, and a mess. I would ramble. I would forget key points. I would arrive at the magical climax without having laid the proper groundwork because I had spent too long on an unscripted tangent about something the volunteer said. The words were coming from me, but they were not organized enough to serve the performance.
I was toggling between two bad options: scripted but dead, or alive but chaotic. What I needed was a third option. A middle path that combined the clarity of a written script with the naturalness of unscripted conversation.
I found that path in Pete McCabe’s Scripting Magic 2, and it changed my approach to every performance I have done since.
The Middle Path
The method is deceptively simple. It has three steps.
Step one: write everything down. Write a complete, polished script for your routine. Every word. Every transition. Every line of patter. Write it as carefully and precisely as you would write a business proposal or an important email. Make it good. Make it clear. Make it the best version of what you want to say.
Step two: identify the key lines. Within the complete script, certain lines are structural. They are the opening line that establishes the premise. The punchlines that get laughs. The transitional phrases that move the routine from one phase to the next. The closing line that lands the climax. These key lines must be delivered exactly as written. They are load-bearing walls. Remove them or change them and the structure collapses.
Step three: for everything else, do not memorize the words. Memorize the ideas. Know what you need to communicate between key lines, but express it in your own words, freshly, each time you perform.
The result is a performance that has a scripted backbone — the key lines are precise, polished, and consistent — surrounded by natural, conversational material that varies slightly from show to show. The key lines keep the structure intact. The conversational material keeps the delivery alive.
Why Writing It Down Matters Even If You Do Not Memorize It
The most common objection I hear from other performers when I describe this method is: why bother writing it all down if you are not going to memorize it?
The answer is that writing clarifies thinking. The act of putting your patter into written form forces you to confront every vagueness, every logical gap, every moment where you are relying on improvisation to cover a structural weakness.
When I write a complete script, I discover things about my routine that I would never discover by performing it. I find transitions that do not make sense. I find moments where I am saying too much. I find premises that are not properly established. I find logical inconsistencies between what I say at the beginning and what I say at the end.
All of these discoveries happen on paper, not on stage. And that is enormously valuable, because discovering a structural problem on paper costs nothing. Discovering it on stage costs a performance.
The writing process also produces better ideas. When you force yourself to write out your patter word for word, you engage a different part of your brain than when you improvise. The written version is more precise, more considered, more crafted. And even though you will not deliver the written version verbatim, the thinking that produced it will inform your delivery. You will say things better because you have thought about them more carefully.
McCabe emphasizes this point strongly: the script is not a delivery document. It is a thinking document. It is a tool for understanding your own routine more deeply. The fact that you wrote it does not mean you need to recite it. It means you have done the intellectual work of understanding what your routine is about, what each moment is for, and how the pieces fit together.
Identifying Key Lines
The hardest part of this method, for me, was identifying which lines were key lines and which were conversational material.
My first attempt was to mark almost everything as a key line. This defeated the purpose entirely. If every line is a key line, you are back to memorizing the entire script, and you are back to the teleprompter problem.
I forced myself to limit key lines to no more than ten per routine. Ten lines, in a routine that might have seventy or eighty lines total. Ten lines that had to be delivered exactly as written. Everything else was conversational.
The process of selecting those ten lines was illuminating. It forced me to ask: which moments in this routine are structurally irreplaceable? Which lines carry weight that no paraphrase could reproduce? Which lines have been crafted so carefully that changing a single word would weaken them?
The answers were surprisingly clear.
The opening line is almost always a key line. The opening establishes tone, premise, and character in a few seconds. It needs to be precise. There is no room for rambling in the opening, because the audience has not yet committed to listening, and a vague or unfocused opening loses them before the routine has begun.
Punchlines are key lines. Humor depends on exact wording. The difference between a laugh and silence is often a single word, a single syllable, the placement of the stressed word in the sentence. Punchlines cannot be paraphrased. They must be delivered with surgical precision.
Transition lines are key lines. The moments where the routine shifts from one phase to the next — from setup to development, from development to climax, from one effect to the next — need specific language to bridge the gap. A paraphrased transition often loses the logical thread that holds the routine together.
The revelation line is a key line. The moment where the impossible thing is revealed — the prediction matches, the chosen card appears, the mentalism piece reaches its conclusion — needs exact language. The words that frame the climax determine how the climax is received.
Everything else — the conversational material between these structural anchors — can be expressed naturally. The stories, the observations, the audience interaction, the small talk that fills the space between key lines. This material should sound like a person talking, not a performer performing.
How I Practice the Middle Path
My rehearsal process now has two distinct phases. In the first phase, I practice the key lines. I say them out loud, over and over, until they are etched into muscle memory. The words, the timing, the emphasis, the rhythm — all locked in. These lines should feel as natural as my own name. Automatic. Effortless. Available without conscious recall.
In the second phase, I practice the conversational material. But I practice it differently. Instead of repeating the same words, I practice the ideas. I know what I need to communicate between key line three and key line four. I know the points I need to make, the information I need to convey, the emotional tone I need to establish. And I practice expressing those ideas in different words each time.
This sounds strange, but it works. I will sit in a hotel room and run through a routine, hitting all the key lines exactly, but filling in the conversational material differently each time. Sometimes I tell a slightly different version of the setup story. Sometimes I spend more time on one point and less on another. Sometimes I use a different analogy to explain the same concept.
Each run-through is slightly different. And each run-through is natural, because I am genuinely choosing my words in real time. The key lines keep me on track. The conversational material keeps me present.
After many practice sessions, the conversational material starts to settle into a range. Not a fixed script, but a range of acceptable variations. I know the territory so well that any path through it reaches the right destination. The specific path varies. The destination does not.
The Corporate Keynote Application
This method has been transformative for my corporate keynotes. Keynote speaking, even more than magic performance, demands the feeling of spontaneity. An audience that suspects a keynote speaker is reciting memorized text disconnects quickly. They want to feel that the speaker is thinking in real time, responding to the energy of the room, speaking to them specifically.
Before I adopted the middle path, my keynotes were either over-scripted or under-prepared. The over-scripted versions were polished but impersonal. The under-prepared versions were authentic but unfocused. Neither was what I wanted.
Now, my keynotes have a scripted backbone — the opening, the key transitions, the punchlines, the closing — surrounded by material that I express naturally each time. The backbone ensures that every keynote covers the essential points, in the right order, with the right emphasis. The natural material ensures that every keynote feels fresh, responsive, and tailored to the specific audience.
The feedback has been consistent. People tell me my keynotes feel “conversational,” which is the highest compliment a speaker can receive. They feel like I am talking to them, not at them. They feel like the ideas are being formulated in real time, not recited from memory.
The ideas are not being formulated in real time. They were formulated weeks or months ago, in a hotel room, in a written script that I will never read from. But the feeling of real-time formulation is genuine, because the words are genuinely being chosen in the moment. Only the ideas are predetermined. The expression is live.
The Skeleton and the Flesh
I think of the key lines as the skeleton. The skeleton provides structure, shape, and support. Without the skeleton, the body is a shapeless mass. The skeleton must be strong, rigid, and correctly assembled.
The conversational material is the flesh. The flesh gives the body its appearance, its warmth, its life. Without the flesh, the skeleton is a clinical display, impressive in its precision but lacking humanity.
You need both. A script that is all skeleton — all key lines, no conversational material — is technically impressive but emotionally cold. A script that is all flesh — all improvisation, no structural anchors — is warm but formless. The middle path gives you both: structure and life. Precision and spontaneity. The clarity of careful writing and the warmth of natural speech.
What I Wish I Had Known Earlier
Looking back, I wish I had discovered this method in the first month of my performing journey rather than two years in. It would have saved me from the twin agonies of memorization and improvisation. It would have freed me from the false binary that I was trapped in — the belief that you either script everything or script nothing.
The truth is more nuanced. You script everything once, as a thinking exercise. You memorize the structural essentials. And you trust yourself to fill in the rest, because you have done the thinking work that ensures the “rest” is heading in the right direction.
Write it all down. Then do not memorize it. Memorize the skeleton. Let the flesh be alive.
It is the simplest advice I have ever received about performance scripting, and it has taken me the longest to fully understand. But now that I understand it, I cannot imagine performing any other way. The middle path between memorization and improvisation is not a compromise. It is the destination. It is where natural delivery lives. And natural delivery — the feeling that a person is genuinely talking to you, with clarity and purpose and warmth — is the most powerful performance tool any of us will ever have.