The first step in bringing a magic trick to life is often overlooked and rarely discussed—faking it. That’s right, faking it.
Magicians are quite lucky because they can quite easily make believe most tricks. It’s tricky for other art forms to do the same. As a comedian or musician, you might build your set in one of two ways:
- Piece by Piece
- Layer by Layer
Piece by piece involves building the first section of the set. Then going back to make changes and try it again with a new piece at the end. Then you repeat.
Layer by layer involved going out with a flimsy full set and then ironing out the kinks over and over again. You can think of this as painting a beautiful picture layer by layer.
Many magicians come up against a mental block when trying to bring their trick ideas to life. It’s a fear of failure and an unwillingness to be incomplete. A trick failing is very different to a joke not landing or a singer not hitting a note in a song. Failure feels bigger for magicians. The idea of building a trick seems intimidating because it needs to work, you cannot fail, and it must be complete.
Magicians can feel forced to go from 0 to 100, and that’s a hard task for anyone. Taking an idea to a finished trick is a long and difficult process, and you need to find a way to enjoy that in between without feeling like failing.
Magicians are lucky, though; they can fake everything. Before you go out and spend money on a prop, or a method, or an audience, you can fake it. Magicians can fake things in a way that other art forms cannot. A fake magic trick can look near identical to a real one.
