I was sitting in a hotel room in Vienna, working on a new piece for an upcoming keynote, and I was doing what I always did: I had chosen the trick first, and now I was trying to write patter for it. I had the effect — something visual and surprising that I knew would get a reaction — and I was trying to figure out what to say while performing it.
The process was miserable. Everything I wrote felt forced. The words did not connect to the trick in any meaningful way. I was decorating the effect with language rather than building something where the language and the effect were inseparable.
That is when I reread a passage from Fitzkee’s Showmanship for Magicians that I had highlighted months earlier but not fully absorbed: the idea that it is better to fit tricks to the lines than lines to the tricks.
The conventional approach — which I had been following without question — starts with the trick. You learn an effect, you master the mechanics, and then you write something to say while performing it. The words serve the trick. They fill the silence between the moves. They set up the climax. They provide a veneer of meaning over what is essentially a demonstration of skill.
Fitzkee argued for the reverse. Start with what you want to say — your message, your story, your theme, the idea you want the audience to walk away with. Then find tricks that illustrate those words. The trick serves the message, not the other way around.
When I first read this, I thought it was an interesting theoretical position but impractical for a performer who already had a repertoire of tricks he could do well. Now, having tried both approaches extensively, I believe it is the single most important piece of advice about act construction I have encountered.
Why Words First Changes Everything
The reason most magic patter is forgettable is that it was written as an afterthought. The performer chose the trick for its visual impact, its cleverness, or its method elegance. Then, faced with the reality that you cannot perform in silence for twenty minutes, they wrote some words.
These words are almost always in service of the trick. They describe what is happening. They set up the conditions. They tell the audience what to expect. “I have here an ordinary deck of cards.” “Watch carefully.” “Nothing up my sleeves.” These are lines fitted to tricks. They exist because the trick needs them, not because they need to be said.
Compare this with a piece where the words came first. A story about trust — how we decide who to trust, how easily that trust can be manipulated, how the smartest people in the room are sometimes the easiest to mislead. That is a message. It stands on its own. It is interesting without any magic at all.
Now, attach a mentalism effect to that message. An effect where the audience experiences the very phenomenon you are describing. They trust you, and that trust leads them to a place they did not expect to arrive. The magic does not illustrate the message. It IS the message. The audience does not just hear about trust being manipulated. They experience it in real time.
That is the difference between fitting lines to tricks and fitting tricks to lines. In the first approach, the words are wallpaper. In the second, the words are architecture.
How I Made the Switch
The transition was not instant. I had a repertoire of effects I had spent months learning. I was not going to throw them all out and start over. Instead, I began working backward from the messages I wanted to deliver.
As a consultant and keynote speaker, I already knew what I wanted to say. I had themes I returned to in every presentation: the nature of perception, the gap between what we see and what is real, the way assumptions shape decisions, the power of attention and where we direct it. These were not magic themes. They were business themes, human themes, themes that resonated with the audiences I was speaking to.
I wrote those themes out as short paragraphs. Not scripts, not patter — just the core ideas I wanted to communicate. Then I asked: which of my existing effects could serve these ideas?
Some matches were obvious. My mentalism pieces — prediction effects, demonstrations of apparent mind reading — mapped naturally onto themes about perception, assumption, and the gap between what we think we know and what is actually true.
Other matches were less obvious but more interesting. A visual effect where something appeared in an impossible location mapped onto a message about innovation: the answer is often right in front of you, but you cannot see it because your assumptions about where to look are wrong. The trick became a metaphor. The metaphor made the trick meaningful.
And some effects — good effects, effects I liked performing — did not match any of my themes. They were impressive but meaningless in the context of what I wanted to say. Following Fitzkee’s logic, I set those aside. Not permanently. But for the current show, they did not belong, because they served no message.
The Keynote Speaker’s Advantage
I had an unfair advantage in making this switch, and I want to acknowledge it. My primary performance context is keynote speaking. I am already in the business of communicating ideas. My audiences expect a message. They expect to walk away having learned something or seen something differently.
For a performer whose context is pure entertainment — a stage show, a close-up set at a restaurant, a party — starting with the message might feel less natural. What message does a close-up card routine carry?
But Fitzkee’s advice applies even there. The “lines” do not have to be a grand philosophical message. They can be a story. A joke. A character piece. An observation about human nature. Any content that is worth saying on its own, without magic.
The question to ask is: if I stripped the trick out of this performance and just stood here talking, would anyone listen? If the answer is yes — if the words are interesting, funny, moving, or thought-provoking on their own — then you have lines worth fitting tricks to. If the answer is no — if the words are just filler between magical moments — then the words need to be rewritten or replaced.
The Patter Trap
The word “patter” itself reveals the problem. It is an ugly word. It suggests mindless chatter. Talk that fills space. Sound without substance. And that is exactly what most magic patter is.
Fitzkee wanted magicians to stop writing patter and start writing dialogue. Dialogue has purpose. It reveals character, conveys information, directs attention, establishes theme, sets tempo. Patter just… exists. It is there because silence would be awkward.
I banned the word “patter” from my vocabulary. I call it script, or dialogue, or text. The change in terminology reflects a change in standards. When I sit down to write words for a performance, I am not writing filler. I am writing something that needs to be good enough to stand on its own.
The Process in Practice
Here is how I now develop a new piece for a keynote:
Step one: Identify the message. What is the one idea I want this piece to communicate? Not the trick. The idea. “Attention is a finite resource and where you direct it determines what you see.” That is a message.
Step two: Write the words. Without thinking about magic at all, I write what I would say to communicate this idea. A story from my consulting work. A study I read about selective attention. A personal anecdote about a time I missed something obvious because I was focused on the wrong thing. I write it as if I were preparing a keynote segment with no magic at all.
Step three: Find the trick. Now I ask: which effect in my repertoire could serve this message? Which trick demonstrates selective attention? Which effect reveals the gap between what people think they are seeing and what is actually happening? I am shopping for effects the way a filmmaker shops for locations — looking for something that serves the story, not the other way around.
Step four: Integrate. This is where the real craft happens. The words and the trick need to become inseparable. The magic should feel like a natural extension of the message, not an interruption. The climactic moment of the trick should coincide with the climactic moment of the message. When the impossible thing happens, it should illuminate the idea, not distract from it.
Step five: Test and refine. Perform it. See where the words feel natural and where they feel forced. See where the trick and the message align and where they pull apart. Adjust. Rehearse. Perform again.
What Happens When You Reverse the Process
The results of words-first construction are different in kind, not just in degree. When the words come first, the entire performance has a reason to exist beyond “watch this cool thing.” The audience leaves not just with the memory of an impossible moment, but with an idea that the impossible moment illustrated.
At a conference in Graz last year, I performed a piece built entirely around the message that first impressions are almost always wrong. The magic was embedded in a story about a consulting project where every assumption the team started with turned out to be backwards. The effect — a prediction that seemed to have gone spectacularly wrong, then revealed itself to have been right in a way nobody expected — was the story’s punchline.
Afterward, multiple people came up to me. Not one of them led with “How did you do that?” They led with the message. “That thing about first impressions — that is exactly what happens in our team meetings.” “I keep thinking about the assumptions I am making in my own work.”
The magic had done its job. It had made the message unforgettable. But it was the message they remembered, not the method. And a message that lives in someone’s mind is worth more than a puzzle that lives there.
The Hard Part
The hard part is restraint. When you have a great trick — something visually stunning, something that gets gasps every time — you want to use it. You want it in the show. And the words-first approach sometimes tells you that there is no place for it. The trick does not serve any message you want to deliver. It is impressive but orphaned.
Fitzkee is clear about this: fit determines inclusion, not quality. A trick can be technically brilliant, visually stunning, and deeply impressive, and still have no place in your show if it does not serve what you want to say.
This is difficult to accept. It goes against every instinct a performer has. We collect tricks the way musicians collect songs. We want to play them all. But a concert is not a playlist, and a show is not a catalog. It is a curated experience, and curation means leaving things out.
The consolation is that the tricks you leave out are not gone forever. They wait. And sometimes, when you develop a new message — a new theme, a new story, a new idea — one of those orphaned tricks turns out to be exactly what you need. The trick finds its home. And when it does, it lands harder than it ever did in isolation, because now it means something.
Start with the words. Find the tricks that serve them. It sounds backward. It is backward, relative to how most performers work. And it produces work that is, by a wide margin, the most meaningful I have ever created.