In the previous post, I wrote about the concept of backstory — the idea that every magic routine has an implied origin story, and that if you do not provide one, the audience defaults to the least magical interpretation possible. Today I want to go deeper. Deeper into the specific questions that build a believable backstory, and deeper into what happened when I forced myself to answer them for every routine in my show.
The catalyst was something I encountered in Derren Brown’s writing — his concept of what he calls the Hero Model. Brown argues that if someone genuinely possessed extraordinary abilities, those abilities would not be casual or effortless. They would come with a history of discovery, a period of development, a set of limitations, and a precarious balance between success and failure. Real abilities — the kind people actually believe in — require investment. They cost something. They are earned, not given.
This insight restructured how I think about character in magic. Because the character I had been performing — confident man walks on stage and demonstrates impossible things — had no investment, no cost, no earning. The abilities just existed. They appeared fully formed, like a suit I put on when I walked on stage and took off when I walked off. And the audience could feel the costume.
The Five Questions
I developed a set of five questions that I now answer for every routine before it enters my show. They are drawn from Brown’s framework, from McCabe’s scripting principles, and from my own experience struggling with flat, characterless performances. Here they are.
Question one: How did you acquire this ability?
This is the origin question. It asks for a narrative explanation of how you came to possess the power that the routine demonstrates. The answer must be specific, personal, and connected to your actual identity.
For me, the answer varies by routine type. For mentalism pieces, my acquisition story is rooted in psychology and consulting — years of reading people professionally, combined with a deliberate study of behavioral science that began when I started exploring magic. For card-based pieces, my acquisition story is rooted in obsessive practice — the hotel room narrative that is genuinely my life. Hours alone with a deck of cards, discovering what hands can learn to do when given enough repetition and attention.
These acquisition stories are not lies. They are framings. They take real elements of my life and arrange them into a narrative that supports the magic. I genuinely did spend years reading people in boardrooms. I genuinely do practice obsessively in hotel rooms. The backstory extends these truths into the territory of the extraordinary, suggesting that the same real processes produced abilities that go beyond what the audience considers normal.
Question two: When did you first discover it?
This question adds temporal depth. An ability that exists in the present is a fact. An ability that was discovered at a specific moment in the past is a story. And stories are inherently more engaging than facts.
My discovery moment for mentalism is a real one, slightly dramatized. I was in a meeting — a strategy session with a difficult client — and I noticed something that I should not have been able to notice. A micro-expression, a shift in body language, something that told me the client had already made their decision before the presentation began. I called it. I was right. And the reaction from my colleague — the look of “how did you know that?” — was identical to the reactions I now get on stage.
That moment was real. It happened in a conference room in Vienna. It was not magic; it was professional intuition. But it is the discovery moment for my character’s ability, because it is the moment I realized that reading people could go further than I had previously thought possible.
For card work, my discovery moment is also real: the first time a sleight worked in front of a live person and they reacted with genuine astonishment. I was in a hotel lobby in Salzburg, practicing what I thought was a simple demonstration, and the person I showed it to looked at me as though reality had briefly malfunctioned. That moment — the moment the practice paid off in a way that surprised even me — is the discovery moment for my character’s relationship with cards.
Question three: What are the limitations of this power?
This is the question that most performers skip, and it is the most important one. Because limitations create believability.
Brown is explicit about this: if you claim unlimited power, nobody believes you. If you claim specific, bounded, sometimes-failing power, everybody believes you. Think about how real abilities work. A chess grandmaster can see fifteen moves ahead but sometimes loses. A surgeon can perform miracles but sometimes faces complications. A detective can read a crime scene but sometimes follows the wrong lead. Real abilities have boundaries, costs, and failure modes.
My character’s limitations are deliberate and consistent. My ability to read people is presented as probabilistic, not certain. “I’m right about seventy percent of the time” — a line I use in my mentalism pieces — establishes that the ability is real but imperfect. It creates the thrilling possibility that I might be wrong, which makes the moments when I am right dramatically more powerful.
My relationship with cards is presented as something that works only under conditions of intense focus. “This only works when I’m paying complete attention, which is why I never try this at parties after two drinks.” Self-deprecating, humanizing, and it establishes a limitation that makes the ability feel real rather than supernatural.
The limitations also give me built-in recovery options. When something goes wrong on stage — which it does, because live performance is inherently unpredictable — the limitations are there to catch me. “I told you, seventy percent” gets a laugh and buys time. The limitation is both a believability tool and a safety net.
Question four: Who else has this ability?
This question places your character in a world. You are not the only person who can do what you do. There are others. Maybe they taught you. Maybe you read about them. Maybe you met one of them once and it changed your trajectory.
My answer to this question draws on real figures from the history of magic and mentalism — figures I have studied and genuinely admire. I do not name them on stage as teachers (because they were not my teachers), but I reference the idea that there is a tradition, a lineage, a community of people who have explored these abilities throughout history. “People have been studying this for centuries” — a line I use to introduce my mentalism work — places my ability in a historical context that adds weight and credibility.
The implication is that my ability did not appear from nowhere. It is part of a lineage. It has precedent. Other people have developed similar abilities in similar ways. This makes the ability feel less like a trick and more like a discipline — a field of study with its own history and its own practitioners.
Question five: What does this ability cost you?
This is the deepest question, and it is the one that surprised me most. Every real ability has a cost. Talent costs time. Skill costs effort. Knowledge costs comfort, because knowing things often means knowing uncomfortable things. What does your character’s ability cost them?
I thought about this for a long time before finding my answer. And the answer, when it came, was both personal and true: the ability costs me the luxury of not paying attention. Once you learn to read people — really read them, beyond the surface, into the behavioral patterns underneath — you cannot turn it off. You notice things you were not looking for. You see dynamics in a room that nobody is discussing. You carry the weight of what people are not saying, because you can see it even when they are hiding it.
This cost is real. It is a genuine side effect of my consulting work, my psychology studies, and my practice in observational skills. It is not a magic cost. It is a human cost. And sharing a version of it on stage — briefly, lightly, with enough humor to prevent it from becoming therapy — adds a dimension of authenticity that audiences respond to viscerally.
“The worst part about learning to read people,” I say in one of my mentalism routines, “is that you can never unlearn it. You see things at dinner parties that you wish you hadn’t seen. You know when your friends are lying. You know when the barista is having a terrible day. It’s useful in my consulting work. It’s occasionally useful on stage. And it is never, ever useful at family reunions.” The audience laughs, recognizes the truth underneath the humor, and now believes — a little more than they did before — that the ability is real.
Assembling the Character
When you answer all five questions, something happens that no individual answer could produce: a character emerges. Not a persona you invented. Not a mask you wear on stage. A character that grows organically from real elements of your life, arranged into a narrative that supports the magic you perform.
My character is a strategy consultant who spent years reading people professionally, discovered that his observational abilities went further than he expected, developed them through deliberate practice in hotel rooms across Austria, operates within probabilistic rather than absolute boundaries, belongs to a long tradition of people who study human behavior, and pays the cost of permanent hyperawareness.
That character is not a fabrication. It is a curated version of who I actually am. Every element is rooted in truth. The curation — the selection and arrangement of elements into a narrative — is the creative work. And that creative work gives me something I did not have before: a coherent answer to the question that started this entire investigation. How did you learn to do this?
The Application
I brought these five questions to a working session with Adam Wilber when we were developing a new product for Vulpine Creations. We were discussing how to help other performers think about character and presentation, and the five questions became a framework that we found ourselves returning to repeatedly.
The framework works for any style of magic, not just mentalism. A card performer can answer the five questions. A stage illusionist can answer them. A children’s entertainer can answer them. The specifics change, but the structure remains: acquisition, discovery, limitation, community, and cost. Together, these five answers build a character that audiences instinctively believe, because the character has the qualities that all real abilities have — a history, a context, boundaries, and a price.
What I Tell Myself Before Every Show
Here is the practice I have developed. Before every performance — whether it is a keynote in Linz, a private event in Innsbruck, or a product demonstration at a Vulpine Creations showcase — I spend two minutes reviewing my backstory answers. Not the scripts. Not the set list. The backstory.
I remind myself where my abilities came from. I remind myself when I discovered them. I remind myself what their limitations are. I remind myself that I am part of a tradition. And I remind myself what these abilities cost me.
This two-minute review is not theatrical preparation. It is character immersion. By the time I walk on stage, I am not thinking about methods or techniques or cue points. I am thinking about who I am and what I can do. The character is loaded. The backstory is present. And every word I say, every gesture I make, every interaction with the audience is filtered through a character who has a history, a reason, and a cost.
The audience cannot see the five questions. They never hear most of the answers. But they feel the difference. They feel the difference between a performer who appeared from nowhere with unexplained abilities and a performer who carries the weight of a story — who came from somewhere, discovered something, developed it at a cost, and is now sharing it with the room.
That weight is the difference between a trick and an experience. And it begins with five questions that every performer can answer, if they are willing to sit in a hotel room with a notebook and take their own character as seriously as they take their technique.