The Craft of Performance

Language Skills

20 posts in this series

Reading Order
1
1 of 20 — 9 min read

You Are a Writer Whether You Like It or Not

Every performer who opens their mouth on stage is a writer -- even if they've never written a word down. I didn't realize my word choices were shaping my audience's experience until I understood that I already had a script. It was just an accidental one.

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8
8 of 20 — 9 min read

Grammar Matters: Why Sloppy Language Erodes Trust

Performance language should sound natural, not academic. But basic grammar errors signal sloppy thinking, and sloppy thinking erodes trust. As a non-native English speaker performing in English, I learned this lesson with extra pain.

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9
9 of 20 — 9 min read

The Honesty Principle: Why Fake Anecdotes Always Ring False

Audiences have a BS detector that is more sensitive than most performers realize. When you tell a fabricated personal story, something rings false -- the details are too clean, the emotion too calculated. The day I replaced a borrowed anecdote with a real one changed everything.

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10
10 of 20 — 9 min read

Don't State the Obvious (Your Audience Is Smarter Than You Think)

Narrating your own visible actions -- 'Now I'm shuffling the cards,' 'I'll place this on the table' -- treats the audience like they cannot see what is right in front of them. The day I cut all procedural narration from my scripts, something remarkable happened: nothing was lost.

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14
14 of 20 — 9 min read

How to Describe What's Happening Without Narrating the Obvious

I used to narrate every action during a performance: 'Now I'm placing the card on the table. Now I'm covering it with the handkerchief.' It took a sharp lesson from scripting to realize I was describing what the audience could already see -- and boring them in the process.

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15
15 of 20 — 9 min read

The Power of Specificity: Why 'This Coin' Beats 'A Coin'

A tiny shift in language -- from generic to specific, from indefinite to definite -- produced a noticeable change in how audiences engaged with my performances. The difference between 'a coin' and 'this coin' turns out to be the difference between a demonstration and an experience.

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16
16 of 20 — 9 min read

Phrases That Build Mystery vs. Phrases That Kill It

Certain phrases create an atmosphere of wonder and possibility. Others reduce magic to a puzzle to be solved. I built a catalog of each and discovered that the difference between mystery and mundanity is often just a few words.

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20
20 of 20 — 9 min read

Why Every Sentence Should Earn Its Right to Exist in Your Script

The ultimate editing principle for performers: if a sentence does not target one of the Big Three reactions, advance the narrative, or build character, it does not belong. This is the capstone of twenty posts on language -- and the reflection that ties them all together.

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