There is a story about Arthur Miller that I encountered in Pete McCabe’s Scripting Magic and have not been able to stop thinking about since. Before writing a play, Miller would compose a single sentence describing what the play was about — not the plot, not the characters, not what happens, but what it was about at its core — and tape that sentence above his typewriter. Every scene, every line of dialogue, every dramatic choice was tested against that one sentence. If a scene served what the play was about, it stayed. If it did not, it went. The sentence was the compass. The sentence was the filter. The sentence was the only authority that mattered during the creative process.
When I read this, I was on a late-evening train from Salzburg to Vienna, and I had my notebook open because I had been working on the script for a new routine. I put my pen down and looked at what I had written. Three pages of notes. Dialogue fragments. Staging ideas. Timing marks. Music cues. And nowhere — not on any of the three pages, not in any of my notes for any of my routines — had I ever written a single sentence describing what any of my routines were about.
I had scripts. I had rehearsal plans. I had set lists. I had detailed notes on audience management and prop handling and mic technique. But I did not have the one thing that Arthur Miller considered essential before writing a single word: a clear, simple statement of what the piece meant.
The Sixty-Second Test
I decided to test myself right there on the train. I opened to a fresh page and wrote the names of all six routines in my corporate keynote show. For each one, I gave myself sixty seconds to write a single sentence explaining what the routine was about. Not what happens during the routine — a card is selected, a thought is read, a prediction matches — but what the routine is about. What it explores. What it means to me and, ideally, to the audience.
The results were revealing in the most uncomfortable way possible.
For two of the six routines, I could write the sentence quickly. These were the routines I had spent the most time developing, the ones I had performed most often, the ones that felt the most like mine. The sentences came fast because I genuinely understood what these pieces were about. I had internalized their themes so deeply that articulating them was effortless.
For two more routines, I could produce a sentence, but it took the full sixty seconds and the sentence felt forced. It was not wrong, exactly, but it felt like I was reverse-engineering meaning from a piece that had not been built with meaning in mind. The sentences described themes that I could argue were present in the routine, but that had not been deliberately constructed. They were accidental themes — byproducts of performance, not products of intention.
For the remaining two routines, I could not write the sentence at all. Not in sixty seconds. Not in five minutes. Not for the rest of the train ride. I stared at the blank space next to each routine name and realized, with a clarity that was both illuminating and deflating, that these routines were not about anything. They were technically sound. They got reactions. The effects were strong. But they were demonstrations — displays of ability without underlying meaning. They existed in my show because they worked, not because they mattered.
The Uncomfortable Revelation
This was deeply uncomfortable for someone who had spent fifteen years as a strategy consultant, where the ability to articulate the core purpose of a project in a single sentence is considered a fundamental professional skill. In consulting, we call it the “elevator pitch” or the “one-liner” or sometimes just “the point.” If you cannot state the point of a strategy in one sentence, the strategy is not clear enough. If you cannot state the point of a presentation in one sentence, the presentation will meander. This is not a controversial idea in the business world. It is basic hygiene.
And yet I had been performing routines in front of paying audiences — routines that represented both me and Vulpine Creations — without being able to state what any of them were about in a single sentence. The consultant in me was mortified. The performer in me was defensive. “They get good reactions,” I told myself. “People enjoy them.” Both of those things were true. Neither of those things addressed the problem.
Writing the Sentences
I spent the next week working on this. One routine per day. Each evening in my hotel room — I was traveling for consulting work, as usual, living out of a suitcase in a different Austrian city every few nights — I would sit with one routine and try to write its sentence.
The process was harder than I expected, because the sentence has rules. McCabe is specific about this: the sentence must describe what the routine is about, not what happens during it. “A spectator’s thought is revealed” is not a sentence about what the routine is about. That is a description of the effect. “The impossibility of keeping a secret in a world where everyone is watching” — that is what a routine might be about.
The distinction matters because the effect is the vehicle, not the destination. A car is not about being a car. A car is about getting somewhere. A magic routine is not about the card being found or the thought being read. A magic routine is about something that the card finding or thought reading illuminates.
For the two routines that had resisted the sixty-second test on the train, I realized the problem was not that I had failed to articulate the meaning. The problem was that the meaning did not exist. These routines had been built from the method outward: learn the trick, develop the handling, add some patter, perform. At no point in that process had I asked what the routine was about. It was like building a car without deciding where it was going.
I had two choices. Rebuild the routines around a clear theme, or replace them with routines that already had one. I chose to rebuild, because the effects themselves were strong and the audience reactions confirmed their entertainment value. The effects deserved better presentations. They deserved to be about something.
The Rebuilding Process
Let me walk through one example. I had a routine — a card routine that I performed during the close-up portion of my events — that consistently produced strong reactions. People enjoyed it. The effect was clean and surprising. But when I tried to write the one-sentence description, I hit a wall. The routine was a demonstration. A well-executed, entertaining demonstration, but a demonstration nonetheless.
I sat in a hotel room in Linz with the prop in front of me and a blank page in my notebook, and I asked myself: what could this routine be about? Not what is it about — because it was not about anything yet — but what could it be about?
I brainstormed. I wrote down every possible theme that could connect to the effect. Memory. Trust. Choices. Coincidence. Fate. The illusion of free will. The gap between what we think we decided and what was decided for us. I filled half a page with possibilities.
Then I picked one. I picked “the illusion of free will” — partly because it connected to my consulting work on decision-making, partly because it connected to the audience I most often performed for (corporate professionals who make decisions for a living), and partly because it gave the routine stakes. If the routine was about the illusion of free will, then the spectator’s choices during the routine were not just procedural steps — they were the entire point. Every choice they made was simultaneously real and predetermined, and the tension between those two possibilities was the emotional engine of the piece.
I wrote the one sentence: “Every choice you make feels free, and every choice you make was inevitable.”
I taped it — literally, with hotel-room tape, the kind you use to hang “do not disturb” signs — to the mirror above the desk where I was working. And then I rewrote the script.
The rewrite took three evenings spread over two weeks. I kept the effect. I kept most of the handling. I changed everything else. The opening line shifted from a generic setup to a question about decision-making. The patter during the routine shifted from narration of what was happening to commentary on the nature of choice. The closing moment — the reveal — was reframed as the inevitable conclusion to a series of decisions that the spectator believed were free.
The routine went from strong to meaningful. The reactions did not change in intensity — they were already good — but they changed in character. People stopped saying “How did you do that?” and started saying “That was amazing” or “That really made me think.” The questions shifted from method to meaning, which is exactly where I wanted them.
The Discipline
I now write the one sentence for every routine before I write a single word of script. This is non-negotiable. If I cannot produce the sentence, the routine is not ready for scripting. It needs more development — not technical development, not rehearsal time, but conceptual development. It needs me to sit with it and figure out what it is about.
The sentence lives at the top of every script document. It is the first thing I see when I open the file. It serves as a filter for every creative decision that follows. Does this opening line serve the sentence? Does this joke serve the sentence? Does this music cue serve the sentence? Does this audience interaction serve the sentence?
If the answer is no, the element does not belong in the routine. It might be entertaining. It might get a reaction. But if it does not serve what the routine is about, it is a distraction — a pleasant detour that takes the audience away from the destination.
The Consulting Parallel, One More Time
I keep coming back to consulting because the parallels are so direct. In my strategy work, I have sat in hundreds of meetings where someone presents a beautifully designed slide deck that takes forty-five minutes and leaves the room confused. The slides were well-made. The data was sound. The presenter was articulate. But nobody could tell you what the presentation was about, because the presenter could not tell you either. The presentation was a collection of good slides, not a coherent argument.
The one-sentence test would have caught this problem instantly. If the presenter had been forced to write one sentence describing what the presentation was about, and had been forced to tape that sentence to their laptop before building a single slide, the presentation would have been focused, coherent, and purposeful. Every slide would have served the sentence. Every detour would have been eliminated. The forty-five minutes would have become twenty, and the audience would have remembered the point.
Magic routines work the same way. A routine without a one-sentence description is a collection of moments. Some of those moments are good. Some are even great. But the collection is not a coherent experience. It is a sequence of effects, jokes, interactions, and reveals that happen in order without happening for a reason.
What I Tape to My Typewriter
I do not have a typewriter. I have a laptop that I carry from hotel room to hotel room, from Austrian city to Austrian city, from corporate event to keynote to private function. But the principle is the same.
Every routine in my show has its one sentence. The sentences are written in a file that I review before every performance. Not because I might forget them — I know them by heart — but because reading them resets my intention. It reminds me what each piece is about, which reminds me how to perform each piece, which reminds me what to prioritize when the unexpected happens on stage.
And the unexpected always happens on stage. A volunteer does something unpredictable. A joke falls flat. A sound cue comes in late. In those moments, the one sentence is an anchor. It tells me what matters. It tells me what to protect. It tells me which elements I can adapt and which elements are essential to the meaning of the piece.
Arthur Miller knew what he was doing. The sentence above the typewriter was not a constraint. It was a liberation. It freed him from the infinite possibilities of what a play could be and focused him on the specific reality of what this play was about. It made every decision easier, every choice clearer, every scene more purposeful.
I am not Arthur Miller. I am a strategy consultant from Austria who performs magic in corporate keynotes and is still learning how to be better at it. But the principle scales. Whether you are writing Death of a Salesman or scripting a three-minute mentalism piece for a conference in Salzburg, the question is the same: what is this about? And if you cannot answer that question in one sentence, in sixty seconds, without hesitation — the work is not finished yet.