Eugene Burger, in his interview with Pete McCabe for Scripting Magic, distilled one of the most important principles in all of magic performance into six words: “Don’t talk so much, and slow down.”
When I first read that, I thought I understood it. I thought it meant: be concise. Get to the point. Do not ramble.
I was wrong. Or rather, I was only partly right. Burger was not just talking about economy of language. He was talking about what those words are doing — what function they serve, what purpose they fulfil. And the most common function of most magicians’ words is the worst possible one: narrating visible actions.
“I’m going to take this card and place it on the table.”
The audience can see you taking the card. They can see you placing it on the table. You have just used twelve words to communicate zero information. You have told them nothing they did not already know. You have spent their attention currency and given them nothing in return.
You are performing magic for the blind.
The Procedural Patter Problem
Procedural patter is the technical term for this habit, and it is pandemic in magic. It is the running commentary that narrates the performer’s actions as they happen. “Now I’m going to shuffle these cards.” “I’ll deal three cards face down.” “Let me show you the other side of this envelope.” “I’m going to place your card back in the deck.”
Every one of these sentences describes something the audience can already see. Not one of them adds information, builds anticipation, creates meaning, or engages the audience’s imagination. They are filler. They are the sonic equivalent of dead air — except dead air has the advantage of at least being silent, which can create tension and expectation. Procedural patter creates nothing. It is noise.
The worst part is that procedural patter actively works against you. It trains the audience to tune out your words. Once they realize that your voice is providing a running description of visible events, they stop listening to the content and start treating your voice as background noise. By the time you say something that actually matters — the line that builds anticipation, the phrase that creates meaning, the moment that directs their emotional response — they have already checked out.
I know this because I watched it happen in my own performances.
The Night I Heard Myself
There was a performance in Graz, maybe three years into my journey, where I recorded myself on video. Not for the usual reasons — checking technique, looking for flashing — but specifically to listen to what I was saying.
What I heard horrified me.
At least a third of my words were procedural patter. “I’m going to fan out these cards.” “Let me turn this card over.” “I’ll place your card on the table.” “Now watch.” Narration upon narration upon narration. A play-by-play commentary of events the audience could observe for themselves.
And the worst part: during the moments when I was doing something the audience could not see — when the method was happening, when the magic was being created — I was silent. The silence, which should have been filled with meaningful content that directed the audience’s attention, was empty. And the moments when the audience could see perfectly well what was happening were cluttered with unnecessary description.
I had it exactly backward. I was talking when I should have been quiet, and quiet when I should have been talking.
What McCabe Actually Means
Pete McCabe, across both volumes of Scripting Magic, makes this point more systematically than anyone else I have read. He argues that every word in a performance should do one of two things: reveal character or advance the action. If a line does neither, it should be cut.
Procedural patter does neither. It does not reveal character because it contains no personality — “I’m going to shuffle the cards” tells the audience nothing about who you are. And it does not advance the action because the action is already advancing visibly — the audience can see you shuffling the cards.
McCabe draws on Kurt Vonnegut’s rules for fiction: “Start as close to the end as possible” and “Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.” These rules, imported from creative writing and applied to magic scripting, are devastating to procedural patter. They eliminate it by definition. If a line merely describes what the audience can see, it neither reveals character nor advances the action. It fails both tests. It must go.
The question, then, is: what replaces it?
Tell Them Something They Cannot See
The answer is: tell the audience something they cannot see.
The audience can see your hands. They can see the cards. They can see the objects on the table. They can see the volunteer. They can see your movements. All of this visual information is being processed automatically, without any need for verbal confirmation.
What the audience cannot see is everything else. They cannot see what you are thinking. They cannot see why this particular effect matters to you. They cannot see the significance of the object in your hand. They cannot see the connection between what is happening now and what will happen at the climax. They cannot see the emotional subtext beneath the physical actions. They cannot see the story.
That is what your words are for. Not to narrate the visible, but to illuminate the invisible. Not to describe what is happening, but to create meaning around what is happening.
Here is the difference. Procedural version: “I’m going to place your card face down on the table.” Meaningful version: “This is the moment where everything changes.”
Both versions accompany the same physical action. The first describes it. The second gives it weight. The first tells the audience what they can see. The second tells them what they cannot see — that this moment matters, that the stakes have shifted, that they should pay attention to what happens next.
The Radio Test
I developed a diagnostic test for my scripts that I call the Radio Test. I imagine that my performance is being broadcast on radio — audio only, no visual. And I ask: would my words make any sense to a radio listener?
If the answer is yes, my script is probably doing real work. The words are communicating something beyond the visible. They are telling a story, creating meaning, building anticipation, revealing character.
If the answer is no — if a radio listener would hear a disconnected series of “Now I’m doing this” and “Watch as I do that” — then my script is entirely dependent on the visual, and therefore entirely unnecessary. The audience is getting nothing from my words that they are not already getting from their eyes.
The Radio Test eliminated about forty percent of my scripted material the first time I applied it. What remained was leaner, more purposeful, and vastly more effective. The gaps left by the removed procedural patter were filled with either silence — which builds tension — or meaningful content that engaged the audience’s imagination.
The Magic of Silence
One of the most powerful discoveries I made when eliminating procedural patter was that silence is not a problem to be solved. It is a tool to be used.
Most performers fill silence because silence feels uncomfortable. You are standing in front of people, doing something with your hands, and there is no sound coming out of your mouth. The instinct is to narrate, to fill the gap, to keep the audio channel busy. Procedural patter is, at its core, a response to the discomfort of silence.
But silence, used deliberately, is one of the most powerful tools a performer has. Jamy Ian Swiss, also quoted in Scripting Magic, talks about the “anticipated surprise” — the pause before a revelation that lets the audience figure out what is about to happen a beat before it happens. That pause — that silence — is where the magic lives. The audience connects the dots themselves, and the moment they realize what is about to happen, they gasp. Not because of what they see, but because of what they realize.
You cannot create that moment if you are talking. You cannot let the audience discover the impossible if you are narrating the obvious. The silence provides the space for the audience to think, to feel, to arrive at the conclusion on their own. And arriving at it themselves is infinitely more powerful than being told.
Practical Steps for Elimination
If you are anything like me, your scripts are full of procedural patter that you have never noticed because it has become automatic. Here is the process I used to find it and eliminate it.
First, write out your complete script for a routine, including every word you say. Not what you intend to say — what you actually say. Record yourself performing and transcribe every word.
Second, highlight every line that describes a visible action. “I’m going to…” “Let me…” “Watch as…” “Notice that…” “You can see that…” These are the procedural lines.
Third, for each highlighted line, ask: what would the audience lose if I cut this entirely? In most cases, the answer is: nothing. They can see what I am doing. They do not need me to announce it.
Fourth, for each highlighted line, ask: what could I say instead that the audience cannot see? What meaning, emotion, story, character, or anticipation could I create in this moment?
Fifth, rewrite. Replace the visible narration with invisible communication. Or replace it with silence. Either is better than procedural filler.
When I did this exercise for the first time, I cut more than half of my spoken words. What remained was sharper, more engaging, and more effective. The performance was shorter but felt richer. The audience paid more attention to what I said because everything I said was worth listening to.
Respect for the Audience
At its core, eliminating procedural patter is an act of respect. It says to the audience: I trust that you can see what I am doing. I do not need to explain the obvious. I value your time and attention too much to waste them on information you already have.
And in that respect, in that trust, a different kind of connection forms. The audience senses that you are speaking to intelligent adults, not performing for children who need a running commentary. They lean in, because they know that when you do speak, it will be worth hearing.
That is the goal. Not silence for its own sake, but purposeful speech. Every word earning its place. Every silence serving a function. Nothing wasted. Nothing redundant. Nothing describing what the audience can already see.
Tell them something they cannot see. That is where the magic lives.