Can anyone share with me how you decided the sequence of the effects in your routine?
As in
1) how would you assess the strength of the effects from strong to strongest?
2) how did you come up with the logical flow from effect A to B?
3) Lastly, how do you give a theme to your routine?

Understand what I mean?

The reason I asked is because I recently tried to "group" some of my effects into an "act" so that I would be better organized to perform, instead of just randomly perform the first effect that comes to my mind, thus diluting the succeeding ones, which usually are not as strong as the first.

I just want to know some of your guys' philosophy in structuring your routines and give me some ideas.

I am still exploring the possibilities but so far i think this works best for me in terms of act. I hope i'm not off topic.

I recently did a mentalist act chaining a couple of things together. Theme was the power of the mind.


I started off talking about how mentalism uses their mind to do various things. I continued with my 1st performance of

1) Solo by Mark mason (Visual magic) i somehow felt that my audience would be more interested if i started with something they could see rather than going straight into more of the intangibles as more mentalism acts would consist of

Then i continue to say that magicians tend to be able to teleport various things using their mind just as i did in my 1st performance but besides that we are able to change some things just like harry potter. What next i went straight for

2) moving pips which instead of using classic force i chose to use Envelope trick to do a F***e then continue as per normal moving pips would.

And because of me making a deliberate mistake of guessing it wrong i have logical reason to make myself look like it was a close call - Then i went on took a coke can from the audience. (Patter was "phew that was a close call, im thirsty".

3)proceeded with coke restoration (Patter "how the mind is so convenient for desiring things and have it the way we want it")

Continued to more of the intangibles after the few visuals got them. Patter about skipping magic and lets me just sit down and tell a story about Japanese mythology.

4) Dragon's Pearl - Lennart Green

Then finally i ask what is being a mentalist mean to anyone of them, most said about being a psychic and being able to make predicitions which so far i have only done a "close call 1". So i said i would try to make a ultimate prediction of an entire deck.

Finale
5) Rain man - Lennart Green.



PS: I'm really green so i'm not exact sure if i'm doing it right but just glad to share some of my 2 cents insights.

Hmm... from the sound of it, you are doing a paid show huh? Doing a coke restoration requires quite some preparations.

Ok, I am not that familiar with Lennart Green stuff so maybe you can just roughly tell me what are effects like?

Ok, how would you determine which effect is "stronger"? And why would some effects appear in that sequence? According to strength or logical flow?

My 2 cents worth - You don't plan which effect is strongest to be the last, you make/create it to become the strongest effect in your performance..

My reason for asking is because there are effects that are inherently stronger than others. Example like Stigmata, Out of this World etc...

So can you give an example on how you would structure your effects and how do you make the suceeding ones stronger?

it wasnt exactly a paid show, more of a company christmas dinner show. Anyway i havent been reading as much books on routine structuring as many others have so i can't really say i'm doing it right. But i usually consult my layman friends about their feelings on my acts for feedback. From their feedback i felt that it was more important to deliver the whole act, transiting smoothly from 1 to another. I somehow feel that without leaving them a reason to ponder on how you did your last trick and merely concentrating on your next gives a better feel on the entire performance as a whole.

I personally prefer to start with visual magic to attract my audiences' attention before going into my main highlights.

Lennart Green - Dragon Pearl
My patter revolves around
Whole deck work with story about red suites and black suites being good and evil in a person. Ask spec to cut deck/shuffle deck as story continues. Ask spec to take about half the deck and count if he is odd or even person before beginning ritual to balance the yin and yang. After which i deal 2 cards each as north south east west and centre representing the 4 gates and the key in the centre. Followed by dealing 4 cards each on the N S E W gate representing th guardians of the gate. Continue story about necessity of the criteria in order to continue. NSEW gate and key each set must be red and black. Guardians at 4 gates must be clubs diamonds spades hearts representing loyalty,bravery, blah blah. Set the cards aside. Remaining 26 in spec hands deal 13 and in the 13 must consist of 1 to 13(King). Layout as the yin dragon. Followed last 13 for yang also must consist the same, only this time revelation is that for every yin dragon card for eg Ace of spade(black) the yang dragon must be Ace of a red kind.

Lennart Green - Rain man
Basically predicition of whole deck with a added twist at the end after spec shuffled and turning cards upside down. Lu Chen has done 1 similar to this version. You might want to refer to Lu Chen


Conclusively i usually routine my act according to flow of logic more than how strong it is because i think if my whole act makes sense at the end of the day it transits from 1 act to the finale with a greater impact.

I think Nique Tan has a book and it touches on routine structuring. I believe you have it too Axl. Got read or not?!

If you're talking about serious structuring as in for a paid walk around gig, the magic number is 3. If you're talking about being situated at a table and having to churn out effects after effects, i have no idea how to do that. I don't even know that many tricks to last me 20 minutes to begin with.

With 3 effects in one set, begin with something fast, short, sweet, and visual. Second effect can have a longer patter and presentation. Then end it with something solid.

Most of the time i will start with a coin trick, or else I will do 2 Card Monte. Move on to ACR, and end with Biddle trick, or if i have a table, with triumph.

It's not really how difficult the trick is. Most of the time i will get a sense of how good the trick is when my friends go 'show that trick where you did this and that...' Then i will know that that trick probably gave a pretty lasting impression.

Theme wise, i have yet to see any magician who actually perform a set that was extremely coherent to a particular theme. I don't really know if that's really that important.

The theory of structuring a series of effects is quite straight forward. But the difficult part is to dig out tricks in your arsenal that will fit the criteria. Just go read Nique Tan's book again la!

Zi An

Haha.. I got read his book la!!

I did came out with something on my own using the "Principle of 3" as advocated in the book.

Eg:
Theme: Effects involving Aces.

I would talk about how magicians have this preference for performing tricks using 4 Aces because the Aces are special cards in the deck... blah blah blah..

As I am talking I would proceed with:

a) 4 Aces Production (because I need to find the 4 Aces for my effects)

B) Twisting Aces (simple and straightforward effect with 4 Aces and showing the uniqueness of AS)

c) Jazz Aces (increasing the "difficulty" by using more cards and still using AS as the leader card)

d) Uncle Bob's Dream (incresing "difficulty" by using whole deck and maintaining the theme of 4 aces)

The 4 Aces Production is optional if I'm unable to manage to cull the Aces. The level of difficulty increases with more cards involved (even if Dream doesn't really "need" a whole deck).

The reason I ask this is because I just want to have more ideas. After reading "Strong Magic", I realized I should really structure my effects instead of just randomly perform any one that comes to mind.

Yeah, Nique Tan's book helped a lot too!!

One rule of thumb is to end of the routine with a souvenir. It can be a bent coin, their signed card, a coin in factory sealed bottle, a "fraud bill"or even your name card. Let them take home the souvenir and they will remember the miracle they witnessed. Plus I feel that it is a good way to close the routine.

Most of the time I'll end the routine by saying:" You can keep that as a souvenir, hope you guys enjoy the show! Thank you!"

As for myself when I structure a routine for close up show.

What I would do is some really fast, quick and attenion seeking, like flaming wallet.
This is to plant a seed in them giving them the feeling that 'Wow, this guy is something, I'm interested to see more' By doing so I feel that you have gain them to your side, so when you perform your next two tricks they will still find you good.

hi

just wondering when you are talking about "theme" in magic, do you mean themes like mentalism ect ect or theme as in the patter

On top of that what exactly goes into a routine, i mean i have seen tricks like coins and cards strung together for no apparent reason, not even the patter makes sense, so i was wondering what exactly goes into one

thanks

Cheers

Hi!

Usually when i do magic, the first object i do it with e.g coins,cards,rope i will totally focus on that type of

magic. No structure really.=)

haha!
-blue_mode_1