The best advice I have ever received about performing magic fits into three words. Not a paragraph. Not a chapter. Not a philosophy. Three words that I can deploy in any performance, with any audience, at any moment where a spectator says something I did not expect.
Right, now watch.
That is it. The spectator names a card. It is not the card I need. I say, “Right, now watch.” The spectator guesses a number. It is not the number I intended. “Right, now watch.” The spectator offers an answer, any answer, and regardless of whether it matches my plan, those three words transform what could have been a confrontation into a bridge. A transition. A ramp into the climax.
I picked this up from studying the scripting philosophy in Pete McCabe’s work and from watching how the best performers handle the inevitable moment when reality diverges from the plan. The technique is so simple it almost feels like cheating. But simplicity is not the same as triviality, and this particular simplicity has a psychological architecture beneath it that is worth understanding in detail.
What Those Three Words Actually Do
Break the phrase down.
“Right” — This single word validates whatever the spectator just said. It does not matter if they named the ace of spades when you needed the queen of hearts. “Right” tells them their answer was received, accepted, and valued. It is not a lie. You are not saying “Correct, that is the card.” You are saying “Right” as an acknowledgment — an affirmation that you heard them and that their contribution was the natural next step in the conversation.
In conversational English and German alike, “right” functions as a transition word that signals agreement and forward motion. It means “I’m with you, and here’s what happens next.” It is the verbal equivalent of a nod. The spectator hears it and unconsciously relaxes because they have been validated, not corrected.
“Now watch” — These two words redirect attention. They take the audience’s focus away from whatever just happened — the guess, the name, the number — and point it toward whatever is about to happen. They create anticipation. They build a tiny moment of suspense. The audience is no longer thinking about whether the spectator was right or wrong. They are leaning forward, watching, waiting for whatever comes next.
Together, the three words perform a psychological operation that is almost surgical in its precision. They validate the past and redirect toward the future, all without pausing, all without breaking the flow, all without giving the audience time to analyze whether the spectator’s answer was “correct.”
The Moment I Discovered This
I was performing at a private event in Vienna — a birthday celebration for someone in the tech industry. About forty guests, nice venue, warm atmosphere. I was doing a piece that involved a spectator thinking of a word, and the reveal depended on a specific word choice.
The spectator said “butterfly.”
I needed “freedom.”
In the old days — meaning about eighteen months earlier — I would have hesitated. I would have said something like, “Close, but let me try again.” Or worse, I would have asked her to think of a different word. Both responses would have signaled to the entire room that she had gotten it wrong. Both would have dimmed the energy.
Instead, I said, “Right — butterfly. Now watch.” And I moved directly into the reveal, adapting the climax to incorporate her word. The adaptation was minor. The impact was enormous. She felt like she had contributed the exact right thing. The room never perceived a miss. And the reveal landed with the full force of collaborative astonishment rather than the diminished force of corrected participation.
After the show, she came up to me and said, “How did you know I was going to say butterfly?” She had not just forgotten that the word was her choice. She had retroactively constructed a narrative in which my prediction of her word was the whole point. That is the power of not correcting someone. Their memory rewrites the story in your favor.
Why Simplicity Wins
Austin Kleon has a principle I keep returning to: creativity is subtraction. The art is not in what you add but in what you remove. The three-word phrase “Right, now watch” is a masterpiece of subtraction. It removes the correction. It removes the hesitation. It removes the awkwardness. It removes the moment where the audience wonders if something went wrong.
What remains is pure forward momentum.
I have tried longer versions. “That’s interesting, and here’s where it gets really fascinating…” is fine. It works. But it is six seconds longer than “Right, now watch,” and in performance, those six seconds are an eternity. They are six seconds during which the audience might start to wonder. Six seconds during which the spectator might realize their answer was not what the performer expected. Six seconds during which the adversarial seed could germinate.
“Right, now watch” closes the window in under two seconds. It is a door that shuts so fast the draft never reaches the audience.
The Anticipation Engine
“Now watch” does something beyond just redirecting attention. It creates what I think of as an anticipation engine — a micro-moment of suspense that enhances whatever follows.
Darwin Ortiz describes this dynamic precisely: make them care, then make them wait. “Now watch” is the “make them wait” compressed into two words. It tells the audience that something is coming. Something important. Something worth watching.
This is especially powerful when the spectator’s guess was wrong, because the audience may suspect that something did not go as planned. They are alert. They are curious. They are watching more carefully than usual. And into that heightened attention, you deliver the reveal. The combination of their increased focus and your confident transition produces a reaction that is often stronger than if the guess had been correct in the first place.
I have experienced this enough times now to believe it is not coincidental. The slightly unexpected moment, handled with confidence, creates a better climax than the perfectly smooth moment. The audience’s brief uncertainty amplifies the resolution.
The Body Language Component
The words alone are not enough. There is a physical dimension to “Right, now watch” that is essential to its effectiveness, and it took me several months of practice to integrate it fully.
When you say “Right,” your body language must communicate ease. Not relief — ease. Your posture should not change. Your hands should remain steady. Your eyes should stay on the spectator for the first word, conveying warmth and acknowledgment.
When you say “now watch,” your focus shifts. Your eyes move to whatever object or surface will be the site of the reveal. Your body opens toward the audience. Your energy changes from conversational to theatrical. This shift — from warm personal connection to dramatic presentation — is what carries the audience from the spectator’s answer to the magical moment.
If your body language betrays anxiety during “Right” — if your shoulders tighten, if your eyes dart away, if your hands move too quickly — the audience will read the truth. They will sense that something went wrong, and no amount of verbal smoothness will cover it.
This is why I practice the phrase physically, not just verbally. In hotel rooms, I stand in front of the mirror, imagine a spectator giving me the worst possible answer, and practice delivering “Right, now watch” with the body language of someone who just received exactly the answer they expected.
The mirror does not lie. The first hundred times, my face showed the flinch. The eyes widened for a fraction of a second. The smile tightened almost imperceptibly. It took months of practice before the physical response matched the verbal one — before “Right, now watch” looked as effortless as it sounded.
The Three Variations
Over time, I have developed three variations of the phrase that I rotate depending on context. All serve the same function. All accomplish the same psychological operation. But the variation keeps my language fresh and prevents the phrase from becoming a verbal tic.
The first is the standard: “Right, now watch.” I use this for visual reveals where the audience needs to see something happen.
The second is: “Right, hold that thought.” I use this for mentalism pieces where the payoff is conceptual rather than visual. “Hold that thought” tells the spectator their answer is going to matter later, which makes them feel important and creates forward tension.
The third is: “Right — keep that in mind.” Similar to the second, but with a slightly different tone that works better in intimate settings. It feels more conversational, like advice from a friend rather than instruction from a performer.
All three begin with “Right.” That is the non-negotiable element. The validation must come first. What follows can vary, but the validation cannot be skipped, softened, or delayed.
What This Teaches About Scripting
The broader lesson here — the one that extends far beyond this specific phrase — is about the relationship between scripting and spontaneity.
“Right, now watch” is a scripted response. I have practiced it. I have rehearsed it. I know exactly when I will use it and how it will sound. There is nothing improvised about it.
And yet, when I deploy it in performance, it sounds completely spontaneous. It sounds like a natural conversational response to whatever the spectator just said. The audience would never guess that I have practiced this phrase hundreds of times in hotel rooms across Austria.
This is the paradox of good scripting that McCabe articulates so well. The purpose of a script is not to make you sound scripted. The purpose of a script is to make you sound natural under conditions that would normally make you sound flustered. You script the moments of highest stress so that you can be genuinely present during the moments of lowest stress.
“Right, now watch” handles the highest-stress moment in any interactive performance: the moment when the spectator’s response does not match your expectation. By scripting that moment, I free my mind to be fully present for everything else.
The Compound Effect
There is a compound effect to consistently making spectators feel right. It extends beyond any individual performance.
When you perform regularly for the same community — as I do in the Austrian corporate world, where the same faces appear at different events throughout the year — your reputation accumulates. People who have participated in my performances talk to people who have not. And what they say is never “He told me I was wrong.” What they say is something like “I said the completely wrong thing and he still made it work.”
That sentence — “he still made it work” — is the best advertisement a performer can have. It communicates competence, grace, and the ability to navigate the unpredictable. It tells potential clients that I can handle anything their event throws at me. It tells future spectators that participating is safe, that they will not be embarrassed, that the experience will be positive regardless of what they say.
This reputation is built one “Right, now watch” at a time. Each instance is tiny. But over dozens of performances, hundreds of interactions, and thousands of spectator responses, the compound effect is substantial. It becomes the defining characteristic of how people experience your work.
The Universal Application
I use “Right, now watch” in contexts that have nothing to do with magic. In keynote speaking, when an audience member’s question goes in an unexpected direction, I say something similar: “Right — and that leads to something I want to show you.” In workshop facilitation, when a participant’s suggestion is not quite on target: “Right, keep that — it’s going to matter in a minute.”
The principle is always the same. Validate first. Redirect second. Never correct.
In a world where people are constantly being told they are wrong — by social media, by the news, by the algorithms that show them what they should have bought instead of what they actually bought — the simple act of saying “Right” to another human being is almost radical in its generosity.
You are telling them: I see you. I hear you. What you said matters. Now let me show you something.
Three words. The most useful script I have ever written. And the script I practice more than any other, because the moments that require it are the moments that define whether a performance is good or unforgettable.
Right, now watch.