The Five-Pointed Star: A Checklist That Changed How I Design Every Routine
I used to think a good trick was about the method and the script. Then I found a five-element checklist that revealed how much I was leaving on the table.
The Five-Pointed Star Framework
View AllWhy Your Arabian Carpet Matters More Than Your Card Force
I spent months perfecting a technique and nobody cared. Then I spent twenty minutes choosing a tablecloth and it changed everything.
Footsteps on Twigs: How Environmental Sound Design Transforms Magic
I always thought sound in magic meant music. Then I discovered what happens when you design the sonic environment of a performance from scratch.
Russian Cards, Beeswax Wands, and Black Silk: When Props Tell the Story
A prop wrapped in silk communicates something a prop pulled from a printed box never will. I learned to stop treating my tools as tools and start treating them as characters.
Put Flowers in the Vase: Why Contextually Logical Props Strengthen Everything
If you use a vase in your act and there are no flowers in it, the audience already knows it is a trick prop. I had to learn this the embarrassing way.
Weaving Threads: Why Setting, Sound, Light, Props, and Story Must All Agree
I once performed a routine about an old Viennese fortune teller using props that looked like they came out of a plastic bag from a magic shop. The story said one thing. Everything else said another. The audience believed neither.
Finding and Creating Stories
View AllWhy the Best Stories for Magic Are Centuries Old
I spent months trying to invent original stories for my routines. Then I discovered that the most powerful narratives had already been written -- centuries ago, by people whose names are lost to time, in cultures that understood something about storytelling that we have largely forgotten.
Basil Rathbone's Christmas Party: Mining Biographies for Performance Stories
I was looking for a story to frame a routine and found it in the most unlikely place -- a Hollywood actor's memoir from the 1950s. That discovery changed where I look for material forever.
The Playbook Approach: Collecting Stories, Insights, and Philosophies as Raw Material
Matthew McConaughey kept journals for thirty-five years. Austin Kleon maintains a swipe file. Ancient storytellers carried entire libraries in their heads. Three different systems for gathering the raw material that becomes performance -- and what I learned from studying all three.
If They Know the Ending, You've Lost: Choosing Unfamiliar Tales
I built an entire routine around the story of King Midas. The audience knew the ending before I started. The magical climax -- which should have been a revelation -- felt like a formality. That taught me the single most important rule of choosing stories for magic.
Start with the Moon: Hamilton's Four-Step Process for Creating a Performance Piece
I used to start building routines by picking a trick and bolting on words. Then I read a process that flipped the whole sequence on its head -- and everything I built afterward was stronger for it.
The Story Goes Full Circle: Why Circular Narrative Structure Works in Magic
A line you can recall in your last line is worth trying as a first line. That single scripting principle from Pete McCabe changed how I build every routine.
Every Performance Should Leave a Question Hanging in the Air
The best performances I have ever seen did not give me answers. They left me with a question I could not stop thinking about. I am learning to do the same.
Stories as Maps and Medicine
View AllStories as Maps: What a Professional Storyteller Taught Me About Magic
I always thought stories were decoration on top of tricks. Then I encountered the idea that stories are maps -- for navigating landscapes, for navigating life -- and I realized I had been thinking about the relationship between story and magic completely backwards.
Stories as Medicine: The Healing Power Nobody Talks About in Magic
We talk about magic as entertainment, as art, as puzzle-solving. We almost never talk about what stories embedded in magic can actually do for people -- the way they process difficult truths through the safe container of narrative.
The Threshold: Crossing Into a Liminal Space Where Magic Makes Sense
I never understood why 'once upon a time' works until I realized it is not a greeting -- it is a door. And every magic performance needs one.
Containers for Difficult Things: How Stories Let Audiences Process the Impossible
When I stopped presenting tricks and started wrapping them in stories, the audience's resistance didn't just decrease -- it vanished. Stories are containers, and containers make difficult things digestible.
The Hero's Journey in a Three-Minute Card Trick
Joseph Campbell's mythic structure sounded impossibly grand until I realized it maps perfectly onto a simple card routine -- and the hero is not me.
Storytelling Delivery
View AllIf You Keep Stumbling on a Line, the Script Has an Error There
I spent weeks trying to memorize a line that never felt right. The problem was not my memory. The problem was the line.
The Pencil Exercise: A Radio Producer's Trick for Troublesome Words
A former radio producer's absurd-looking pronunciation drill changed the way I prepare for performance. It involves a pencil, your tongue, and the willingness to look ridiculous.
The Box Exercise: How a Radio Training Technique Made Me a Better Performer
I pulled a stapler out of a cardboard box and had sixty seconds to make it the most fascinating object in the world. That drill changed how I perform more than any sleight of hand ever did.
Two Ways to Script a Story: The Flexible Tale and the Fixed Tale
I used to think scripting meant memorizing every word. Then I discovered there are two fundamentally different approaches, and the tension between them taught me more about performance than either one alone.
How I Took Someone Else's Routine and Made It Mine Without Stealing a Word
I bought a routine from a creator I admired, performed it exactly as taught, and it fell completely flat. The problem was not the routine. The problem was that I was wearing someone else's voice.
Small Dog, Big Dog: How Vocal Pitch Controls Your Audience Without a Word
I learned that a higher pitch reassures and a lower pitch commands, and that switching between them is a performance tool hiding in plain sight.
Beeeehold: Why Elongating a Single Word Can Change the Entire Mood
I stretched one word across three seconds and the audience held their breath. Then I clipped the next word to a single beat and they laughed. Vocal elongation is a tool most performers never think to use.
The Silent Language: How Physical Theatre Cues Amplify Your Story
I spent months perfecting my scripts and forgot that my body was telling its own story the entire time -- often contradicting every word I said.
The So What Rule: If Your Audience Would Think It, Cut It
I had a four-minute monologue in my show that I loved. My trial audience's feedback form told me -- in the politest possible terms -- that they did not.
The Storyteller's Identity
View AllI Am Not an Actor Playing a Magician: The Storyteller's Rebuttal
Robert-Houdin's famous line has defined how magicians think about performance for over a century. I think it sells us short.
What I Learned at a Storytelling Festival That Changed My Magic
I went to a storytelling festival with no cards in my pockets and no props in my bag. I came home with the most important lesson I have ever learned about performing.
Give Them Something to Take Home: Why Souvenirs Extend the Magic
The performance ends, the audience applauds, and then they go back to their lives. Unless you give them something physical that keeps the story alive.
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What Is a Circular Narrative? Definition, Examples, and Why It Works in Magic
A circular narrative ends where it began, but the meaning has changed. The return creates resonance because the audience experiences the opening differently after everything that has happened in between. Here's why this structure is particularly powerful in magic.
How to Build a Circular Story That Ends Where It Began
The practical process for constructing a circular narrative: choose your opening image, build through change, return with transformed meaning. Here's how I work through this for magic and mentalism routines.
Verse, Chorus, Verse: What Pop Songwriting Teaches About Presentation Structure
Pop songs alternate between new information and a familiar anchor. Presentations should too. Felix's structural insight drawn from his background in music.
One Story, One Number, One Image: What People Actually Remember 48 Hours Later
Audiences retain one story, one data point, one visual from a presentation. Design for those three. Felix applying cognitive retention research to keynote construction.
The Dinner Test: If You Would Not Tell This Story at Dinner, Do Not Tell It on Stage
Matthew Dicks' test for authenticity: if a story wouldn't survive a casual dinner conversation, it's too artificial for the stage. Felix applying this to his patter.
The Five-Second Moment: Why Every Great Story Comes Down to One Instant of Change
Matthew Dicks' most important insight: every great story is about one five-second moment of transformation. Everything else is scaffolding to make that moment land.
But and Therefore vs. And Then: Why Most Routines Stall in the Middle
The storytelling rule that changed how I structure routines: scenes connected by 'but' or 'therefore' create momentum. 'And then' creates boredom.
Your Opening Must Be the Opposite of Your Ending
Matthew Dicks' arc principle: if you end with confidence, start with doubt. If you end with wonder, start with cynicism. Felix applying opposing endpoints to routine structure.
The Reincorporation Principle: Why Callbacks Make Shows Feel Magical
Keith Johnstone found that bringing back earlier elements creates narrative satisfaction audiences crave. Felix uses reincorporation to transform a collection of disconnected tricks into a show that feels like a coherent story.
The Gap Is the Trick: What Robert McKee Taught Me About Magic
McKee's Story reveals that the gap between expectation and result is where story lives. In magic, the gap between what the audience expects and what actually happens IS the trick. Felix connects story theory to magic structure.
Why Every Trick Needs a Reason to Exist: The Controlling Idea
Robert McKee's concept of the controlling idea applied to magic: every routine needs a single sentence that captures why it exists. Felix forcing himself to answer that question for every effect in his repertoire.
The Five-Second Moment: Every Routine Needs One
Matthew Dicks' insight that every great story contains one transformative moment of about five seconds. Everything else sets it up or pays it off. Felix finding the five-second moment in each of his routines.
Homework for Life: The Daily Habit That Fills Your Performance with Authentic Material
Matthew Dicks' daily practice of finding one story-worthy moment and writing it down. Over time, it builds a library of authentic personal material. How Felix adopted this habit and what it changed about his patter.
Beginning Equals Opposite of Ending: Building Arcs into Routines
Matthew Dicks' structural principle that a story must begin in the emotional opposite of where it ends. Felix applying this to routine design -- if the effect closes on wonder, it must open on certainty.
Make It Little: Why the Smallest Moments Create the Most Powerful Magic
Matthew Dicks' counterintuitive insight that the most powerful stories are about small, specific, relatable moments. Grand epic stories distance the audience. Felix learning that intimate beats spectacular.