I had a problem I did not know I had. For over a year, I had been referring to my routines by their published names. In my notes, in my practice journal, in conversations with Adam Wilber when we discussed Vulpine Creations projects, in my own head when I was running through my set list before a show. The names were the ones that came with the tricks. The names that every magician uses. The names that describe the method or the effect from the performer’s perspective.
I am not going to list them here, because the specific names are not the point. The point is that every single name I used was a magician’s name. A technical label. A catalog entry. Not a single name described what the routine meant to me, what it meant to the audience, or what it was actually about.
I did not realize this was a problem until I read a passage in Pete McCabe’s Scripting Magic that made me put the book down and stare at the ceiling of my hotel room in Graz for a full five minutes.
The Passage That Changed Everything
McCabe’s argument is elegant and, in retrospect, obvious. The name you give a routine shapes how you think about it. How you think about it shapes how you rehearse it. How you rehearse it shapes how you perform it. How you perform it shapes how the audience receives it. The entire chain — from rehearsal to reception — begins with what you call the thing.
When you call a routine by its published trick name, you are unconsciously framing it as a trick. A technical procedure. A demonstration of a specific effect. Your relationship with the material stays at the level of method and execution. You think about it as a performer executing a trick, because the name tells you that is what it is.
When you give a routine your own name — a name based on your presentation, your theme, your personal connection to the piece — you reframe the material. You stop thinking of it as a trick and start thinking of it as a story, a moment, an experience. The name becomes a creative anchor that pulls you toward meaning every time you think about the routine.
I understood this intellectually within about thirty seconds. What took five minutes of ceiling-staring was the recognition of how deeply I had been trapped in the trick-name mindset, and how much it had been limiting everything I did.
The Inventory
That night, I opened a new document on my laptop and listed every routine in my working repertoire. Six routines for my corporate keynote show, plus three close-up pieces I performed at pre-event mingles and cocktail hours. Nine routines total. Next to each one, I wrote two things: the published trick name and what the routine was actually about in my presentation.
The exercise was humbling. For three of the nine routines, I could not articulate what the routine was about beyond the effect itself. “A card is found.” “A prediction matches.” “A thought is revealed.” These were effects, not themes. They described what happened, not what it meant. And the published trick names had been reinforcing that emptiness by keeping my thinking at the level of what happens rather than what matters.
For the other six routines, I could articulate a theme, but the theme lived only in my performance — it had never been captured in the name. The name in my notes, on my set list, in my practice journal, was still the published name. The theme existed only when I was on stage, in the moment, performing. It evaporated the instant I stepped off stage and looked at my notes, because my notes used the trick name, and the trick name pulled me back into trick-thinking.
The Renaming
I spent the rest of that evening in the hotel room renaming every routine. The rules I set for myself were simple:
The new name had to reflect the presentation, not the method. It had to be a name that would make sense to the audience — a name that, if they overheard it, would intrigue them rather than confuse them. And it had to mean something to me personally. Not a marketing name. Not a clever brand. A name that captured why this routine existed in my show.
One of my mentalism pieces — a piece where I apparently read someone’s thoughts — had been living in my notes under its generic effect description. I renamed it “The Honest Liar.” The name came from the central theme of the routine, which is about how we all conceal things and how the act of concealment reveals more than we think. The name captured the tension I wanted the audience to feel: the spectator is trying to hide something, and I am trying to find it, and the question of who is more honest — the liar or the person claiming to read lies — is the emotional core of the piece.
Another routine — a card piece that I perform during the close-up mingle before my keynote show — had been filed under its published trick name for over a year. I renamed it “The Decision.” The routine involves the spectator making a series of choices, and my presentation frames it as an exploration of how we make decisions — relevant to my corporate audience, connected to my consulting background, and rooted in genuine curiosity about decision-making psychology. “The Decision” is a name that makes me think about themes and meaning every time I see it in my notes. The published trick name made me think about method every time I saw it.
The most difficult renaming was for a routine that I perform as the closer of my keynote show. It is a strong piece — the reactions are consistent and powerful — but I had never been able to articulate why it mattered beyond the obvious impact of the effect. I sat with this one for a long time. I wrote and crossed out seven names before landing on one that felt right. I am not going to share the name here, because it is so specific to the routine that sharing it might hint at the method, and that violates the one rule I will never break. But the name I chose connects the routine to a personal story about my early days in consulting — a story I tell on stage that gives the magic a context and a purpose beyond “watch this.”
What Changed
The renaming itself took about two hours. The effects took months to fully materialize, and they were more profound than I expected.
First, my practice changed. When I sat down in a hotel room to rehearse, I was no longer running through a list of trick names. I was running through a list of stories. “The Honest Liar.” “The Decision.” Names that immediately evoked the emotional content of the piece, not the technical procedure. I found that I spent more time working on presentation and less time obsessing over execution, because the names kept pulling me toward meaning.
Second, my set list discussions changed. When Adam and I talked about my show — which we did regularly, because building Vulpine Creations required me to perform at a level that represented the company — I started describing routines by their presentation names. “I think ‘The Honest Liar’ should move to second position because the theme of concealment sets up the theme of the next piece.” Compare that to: “I think [trick name] should move to second position because the method requires the audience not to be suspicious yet.” The first conversation is about narrative architecture. The second is about procedural logistics. The names drove the conversation into different territory entirely.
Third, my audience interactions changed. After shows, people would sometimes ask me about a specific routine. Before the renaming, I would mentally translate their description into the trick name. “Oh, they mean [trick name].” Now I translated their description into the presentation name. “Oh, they mean ‘The Decision.’” This seems like a trivial difference, but it is not. The translation determined what I thought about in that moment. Thinking “The Decision” put me in the headspace of themes and meaning. Thinking of the trick name put me in the headspace of method and secrets. And the headspace I occupied when talking to an audience member about my work shaped how I described my work, which shaped how they perceived my work.
The Deeper Principle
There is a broader principle here that extends well beyond magic. The names we give things determine how we relate to them. This is not a mystical claim; it is a practical observation from my consulting career.
When a company calls its employees “resources,” it treats them like resources. When it calls them “team members,” it treats them differently. When a project is called “Phase 2 Implementation,” everyone relates to it as a bureaucratic process. When the same project is called “The Customer First Initiative,” everyone relates to it as a mission. The name is not just a label. The name is a frame. And frames determine behavior.
In magic, the frame of the trick name tells you: this is a trick. Execute it correctly. The frame of a presentation name tells you: this is a story. Tell it with meaning.
I watched this principle play out in real time at a magic convention I attended in Vienna. During a workshop session, performers were asked to describe their acts. Almost every performer described their act as a sequence of trick names. “I open with X, then I do Y, then I close with Z.” The descriptions were mechanical. Method-adjacent. When I described my act using my presentation names, the conversation shifted. People asked about themes, about connections between pieces, about the emotional journey of the show. The names invited different questions, which invited different thinking, which invited different creative choices.
The Name Test
Here is the exercise I now do with every new routine before it enters my working repertoire. I call it the Name Test, and it takes about ten minutes.
First, I write down the published trick name. This is the name the creator gave the effect, and it usually describes the method or the effect from the performer’s perspective. I acknowledge it and set it aside. It served its purpose — it helped me find and learn the routine. Its job is done.
Second, I write down what the routine is about in my presentation. Not the effect. The theme. What is this routine really exploring? What question does it ask? What human experience does it connect to? If I cannot answer these questions, the routine is not ready for my show. It needs more development. More thought. More time in the hotel room with the laptop and the minibar bottles.
Third, I write a name that captures the theme. The name should be evocative, personal, and impossible to confuse with a technique or a method. It should be a name I could say out loud to a non-magician without revealing anything about how the trick works. It should be a name that, when I read it in my notes six months from now, immediately pulls me into the emotional world of the routine.
Fourth, I replace the published name everywhere. In my practice journal. On my set list. In my show notes. In the file name on my laptop where I store the script. The old name is gone. The new name is the only name.
This last step matters more than you might think. If you rename the routine in your head but leave the published name in your notes, the published name wins. Your notes are your reality. What is written is what you think about. And what you think about is what you perform.
The Ongoing Discovery
I am still discovering the effects of this practice. Last month, I was building a new routine for an upcoming conference in Linz, and I started the creative process by writing the presentation name first — before I had finished learning the method, before I had written a single word of script, before I had rehearsed the routine even once. The name came from the theme I wanted to explore, and the theme came from the conference topic, and the conference topic connected to a story from my consulting work.
Starting with the name meant starting with meaning. Every creative decision I made after that — the script, the staging, the music, the audience interaction — was filtered through the name. The name was a compass. It told me what belonged and what did not.
This is what McCabe was pointing toward, and what I did not fully understand until I experienced it myself. The name is not the last step in the creative process. The name is the first step. Everything else follows from what you decide to call the thing.
And if what you call it is a trick name — a label from a catalog, a method description, a technical designation — then everything that follows will be technical. Mechanical. A trick. But if what you call it is yours — a name born from your presentation, your theme, your personal connection to the material — then everything that follows has a chance to be something more.