How to Routine Tricks Together

I saw an interesting coin routine the other day that I liked quite a bit and wanted to bring to your attention. I’ll mention the individual effects first and try to figure out why these tricks make such a good routine.

• First, the magician performed a Chink-A-Chink effect

• From there he went into a Coins Across trick with the coins.

• Then he let one of the spectators “choose” a coin and he did a coin bite with it.

• And he closed by pushing the remaining Coins Through the Table one-by-one.

Why is this such a good routine? Can you figure it out? Why do these tricks go so well together?

I’ll tell you the secret. The reason these tricks go so well together is because they are the first four tricks listed in Wikipedia under the subject of Coin Magic.

“Huh?”

I’ll explain…

When putting together a string of magical moments or effects, we tend to think in terms of a “routine.”

“Here’s my ambitious card routine. The card goes into the middle and comes to the top. Then it goes into the middle again and goes to the top. Then it goes into the middle again… and goes to my wallet! As a kicker, the deck disappears!!”

But is there any difference in magic between the way we use the word “routine” and the way we would describe the output of a machine that randomly spits out various magic tricks/moments? The card goes to the top of the deck twice, then it goes to the wallet, then the deck disappears—this is a routine only because those moments were strung together. There’s nothing else that qualifies this as a routine.

And if the only thing that qualifies this as a routine is because the effects were placed side-by-side, then the term “routine” is essentially meaningless.

“This is my routine” just means “These are the tricks I’m performing back-to-back.”

The title of this post is “How To Routine Tricks Together”

The answer is: Don’t.

Don’t “routine” tricks together.

This is true especially when performing in social situations.

Think in terms of story rather than “routine.”

You have a story you want to tell, and these tricks when put together are going to tell that story.

That’s it. That’s how you put tricks together. If your tricks don’t tell a cohesive story, then there’s no reason to do them together.

This, of course, is a much higher bar than just “routining” tricks together. The reason I could pick the first four tricks alphabetically from the Coin Magic entry and you didn’t immediately call it out as bullshit as far as being a “routine,” is because deep down we know the word doesn’t have any weight. Whereas, if I said, “I have a great recipe.” And said it consisted of the first four ingredients I found alphabetically in my kitchen:

• Almonds

• Albacore tuna

• Anchovies

• Apricot sorbet

You’d probably know I was fucking with you. Because we expect something from a “recipe.”

Calling something a “routine” is just a lazy way of justifying performing a bunch of tricks rather than one.

If you need a more concrete example, on Thursday, I’ll describe one of the strongest three-trick stories you can do.

Mailbag #105 - Christmas Party Wrap-Up

Happy New Year, Everyone!!!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

No! I submit that it should not.

I got a lot of feedback regarding last month’s Christmas Spectacular. I thought I’d take this week’s mailbag to address some of the general responses I got.

“Thank you!”

You’re welcome! But really, don’t thank me. Thank the people who contributed. And I mean that literally. If there was someone who contributed something that you found to be of value, please reach out to them in some way if you haven’t already. It’s one thing to hear it from me, but I’m sure it will mean much more coming from the people who consumed the material.

“So, is this going to be an annual Christmas tradition?”

No!

Here’s the thing, part of the reason I can put a call out to 36 magicians and get 33 contributions in return is because I never do this. This was the first time in eight and a half years that I asked other magicians to submit something to the site. If I started doing it regularly, even if it was only annually, there would be diminishing returns.

So no, don’t expect this to return next Christmas.

That being said, any magicians who want to share something on the site are always free to. (I mean… if it’s good.) This site is one of the few places where you can share ideas with a large world-wide audience who all have a genuine interest in magic. People aren’t just casually perusing this site because they have a fleeting interest in magic. The site is just too dense for that.

So yeah, while the Christmas party was likely a one-off thing (or I’ll do it again in another 8 and half years (Summer 2032 Christmas party, y’all!!)). I’m always open to sharing stuff from other magicians on the site.

“How much was written ahead of time?”

For each entry, I had four things:

1. The guests’ contribution.

2. What time I was going to put their post up.

3. A couple words about what I might write about leading up to their contribution.

4. Anything they were working on that they wanted me to mention.

I wrote that on index cards. And all night I just went from one card to the next. So, for example, with Andi Gladwin I had a card that looked like this.

I’m an incredibly slow writer, generally. Not a slow typer, but a slow writer. As in, slow to organize my thoughts and put them forward in an intelligible way.

The only exception to this is the type of goofball bullshit that introduced many of the posts. That shit flows out of me. But still, trying to write and edit and format a couple of posts every hour was pretty rough.

“What the hell happened in the middle of the night?”

Okay… first, let me start with what my thinking was in regard to how to present the material originally. I decided to make it one long post even though I knew that would be harder for me and harder for the reader. My thinking was, at least on that night, I wanted people to experience the post as if they were travelling through a party. When you go to a party, you come in and wind your way through from room to room and interact with different people as you go. So even if there’s one person in particular you want to see, you still have to work your way to that person. That was the idea of the long post. You had to scroll all the way through to get to who you most wanted to see.

About nine hours in, this became unmanageable. The post that I was repeatedly editing became too long and unwieldy, and every change I was making in the background was super slow to load, which just made it unusable when I was trying to edit and change things quickly. So I broke it off and started a second post around 1:30 am.

So I start in on a second post at that point, and all was going fine until 3am or so when I realized the first post was gone. It wasn’t on the site. And it wasn’t on my dashboard in Squarespace. Just poof 💨

I’ve had posts disappear before, but not posts I spent 9 hours straight writing.

Duplicating effort is my least favorite thing in the world. I’d rather have to walk an additional 5 miles than walk backwards half a mile to get something I forgot. So seeing that post disappear was a gut punch. And it was made worse by my choice to write it live and make it all one post. If I hadn’t done one or the other of those, it would have been the mildest of inconveniences. But the confluence of all those things made it a disaster.

As I was contemplating how to deal with this (while still trying to get the other posts written) I put a message in the announcement at the top of the page that if anyone happened to have the site open in another tab or on another device and they hadn’t refreshed the page recenly, I wanted them to email me so they could copy and paste everything over to me. It was a long-shot, but in the end, with the help of Seth R. and Dan C., I was able to get everything back up by, I think, like 9 or 9:30 in the morning. It meant reformatting and publishing 150 or so graphic elements, text blocks, and all that stuff. But it was better than the alternative in my mind of either writing it all up again a week later, or just saying fuck it and setting the blog on fire.

“How long did you crash for afterward?”

Three hours. I had Christmas plans all the following day with friends.

The timing wasn’t well-thought-out.

Staying up all night isn’t that foreign to me, so it wasn’t that bad. What was bad is that after staring at my laptop screen for 17 hours straight, I couldn’t see anything. Everything was super fuzzy. I prayed, “Please don’t let me lose my eyesight because I tried to write a magic blog for 17 hours.” I didn’t want to have to explain that to others.

Fortunately, god answered my prayers and my vision went back to normal after a day or so.

All-in-all, it was a fun experience. The feedback has been great. But it will likely never happen again.

Oh!

One thing I forgot to mention as I was dealing with sleep-deprivation and losing all the work from earlier in the night was what Caleb Wiles asked me to share on his post. So I’m going to highlight it here.

Caleb is the president of a non-profit called Magic For a Cause. Their mission is in three parts, per their website.

1. We organize magic shows to raise funds for charitable causes. All proceeds go straight to the charity... we never take a cut.

2. We provide magic instruction to empower young people to develop social skills and confidence.

3. We engage in community outreach to perform magic for underserved groups (such as children’s hospitals, foster care group homes, etc.)

If you are interested in donating, please check out the site at the link above.

Caleb also says… “I'm also looking for people who are interested in helping with the project overall (graphic design, website design, custom print services, submitting easy-to-do tricks, etc.) If anyone is willing to contribute, they can reach out to me directly at caleb@MagicForACause.org “ Do it!

Jerx Christmas - So Long - 7:34 AM

Okay, everyone. The sun is up. We’re cooking breakfast here at the Jerx party house. About half of us made it all through the night, the other half are waking up as I type this.

I hope you had a good time. I’m exhausted. Sometime after Christmas, I’ll break the holiday post up into its component parts so it’s not such a bitch to navigate.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all!

Jerx Christmas - Justin Flom - 7:25 AM

Guy’s I’m super excited. All night I’ve been trying to wrangle this trick out of Justin Flom.

He was hesitant to give it up at first. But I think the combination of sleep deprivation along with gallons of mulled wine, dozens of christmas cookies, and a nearly lethal dose of holiday cheer have warmed his heart to the point that he has decided to share it with us.

As Justin presents it, it’s already a strong trick. But if you personalize it, I think it has the power to be a strong and emotionally resonant trick.

Before we get to that, let’s let Justin explain.

After Justin recorded that, we went and looked up how difficult it is to create those one line drawings yourself. So you could do this trick with anyone’s image. Your girfriend’s beloved grandfather. The president of your company. The four-year old who got dragged off by that falcon at whose memorial service you’ve been inexplicably asked to perform magic.

Honestly, it doesn’t look that difficult. It looks pretty easy, actually. Although I’m sure it’s not really that easy. But it seems like the sort of thing a capable artist would be willing to do for you custom for pretty cheap. Or you could muddle through it yourself.

But imagine taking it a step further…

You come out with a completely blank deck of cards. Blank on both sides. Cards are distributed out to people and they’re also given a marker to do a random scribble in the manner you tell them. The line should start on one side of the card and go off another side or the same side. They can make a little loop or other simple shape, or just keep it a curve or straight line. Something simple. And you gather all the cards together and mix them, and now their own random doodlings combine to make the bride’s face, or whatever.

You’d have your 16 card set-up that’s blank on one side, and 25 (or however many) more fully blank cards. Start by giving them a few truly blank cards and showing them how to do the random scribbles on one side. Then take them back. You’re handing out a few at a time, so they’re not really sure how many there are altogether. Once all the cards have scribbles on one side, you pass everything out again to have them scribble on the other sides as well.

With cards going in and out, being scribbled on by multiple people, it would not be difficult to hide the fact that 16 of them started out with scribbles on one side. What would be difficult is making sure you distribute them and re-collect them in a way that keeps your stack in order.

It may just make more sense to swap in your stack at some point when you’re collecting up the cards. Either way, I love the idea of the collective unconsciously creating this image of someone special.

Even if your one line portrait wasn’t super smooth and crisp, that doesn’t matter. If it even hints at the portrait of someone important, that’s a miracle.

Jerx Christmas - Spidey - 6:57 AM

Welp… another crazy thing just happened. I went out on my back deck to enjoy the last few moments of the night and who do I see out there but Spidey.

And spread out all ove the deck are playing cards with weird shit smeared on them: dijon mustard, hot sauce, shampoo, acne cream, toothpaste, ben-gay. And so on.

“Spidey,” I say, “What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s going to happen. Something’s going to happen,” he said. He had a crazed look in his eye. “Look what I discovered,” he said.

And I was caught somewhere between being sort of impressed that he discovered this and a bit perturbed about how he discovered it. And I was like, “That’s cool, man. But I really don’t think you’re just going to stumble over some other crazy combination that has some bizarre effect. Would you mind putting my condiments and toiletries back?”

Immediately, he snapped out of it. “Oh, jesus, man. I’m sorry. My life has been taken over by smearing stuff on playing cards. I’m fucking losing it!”

“It’s okay, dude, seriously. Calm down.”

He gathered himself. “I feel bad,” he said. “I can’t believe I took all your stuff. As an apology… please take this and share it with your readers.”

I like that a lot. It’s reminiscent of something I posted recently. I like any force where the spectator is making clear choices that affect the outcome, and they can see those repercussions in real time.

When I pick a piece of fruit from a fruit bowl, I’m seeing the fruit I’m selecting, and I’m seeing everything I’m not selecting. For a force to feel like an actual choice, that’s the sensation the spectator needs to have. That’s why I like about this, they’re seeing the results of their choices as things get (seemingly) fairly discarded.

I think I would handle the ending just slightly differently. Instead of asking for a number, I’d say: “You’ve eliminated all but these 10 cards. We can stop here and go with the top card as your choice, or we can eliminate that top card.”

If they say they want the top card to be their choice, you can do a double and turn it over.

If not, you turn over the top card and use the handling you described. But instead of counting to a number, you’re slowing things down even further. And they get to choose card-by-card to eliminate cards until they finally settle on one.

When they eliminate one, you turn it over. “If you had stopped their you would have ended up with the 4 of Clubs.” So they’re immediately seeing the consequences of their choices. They’re repeatedly seeing the alternate paths they could have chosen. That makes for a strong force.

When they say they want to stop, you just gather up the face-up cards and set them aside, leaving the force card in place.

I like it. Thanks, Spidey. Don’t worry about using up all my chocolate syrup.

By the way, while Spidey was high on calamine lotion fumes, he let it slip that he and Richard Sanders have a packet trick coming out soon through Murphy’s called King Con. As a huge fan of Richard Sanders, it’s something I’ll definitely keep an eye out for.

Jerx Christmas - Matt Mello - 6:29 AM

From the other room, I heard the front door bang open and loud bellowing voice saying, “Let’s get this party started, baby!!”

What the hell? I thought. It’s after six in the morning.

And I went in the other room to see Matt Mello.

“Matt,” I said, “I wasn’t expecting you. You didn’t RSVP that you were coming.”

“You asked me like a month ago,” he said. “I have know idea what I’m doing a month out. I’m like the guys in The Fast and Furious… I live my life… a quarter mile at a time.”

I just shrugged like, what in the hell does that mean.

“It’s good to see you,” I said. “What have you been up to recently.”

“Well, I just released a hard cover version of my totally propless effect, Thought Control, on my site The Outer Mind.”

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s one of the few pieces of strong, pretty-much-sure-fire, propless mentalism effects that I’ve come across. I’m glad it’s getting a hard cover release. But… uhm… things were just winding down here so….”

“Really?” he said. “My night’s just getting started.”

Just getting started? What is this guy on? I wondered.

“Hey, before I leave,” he said, “Can I share something on your blog?”

“Go right ahead,” I said, and he typed out the following.

107 by Matt Mello

Effect: The performer removed his watch, his business card and a marker, placing them on the table. He wrote something on the card, rolled it into a cigarette and placed it down. Picking up the watch, he said, “I’m going to show you how our subconscious mind can be influenced. Watch the hands as they spin around and around, trying to get a sense of how much it moves on every turn of the dial.”

The performer turned the watch towards himself now and continued to spin. “Allow your subconscious to keep track of the dial. Don’t think about the time, that it could be one or seven, just watch the spinning dial.”

After a few moments he handed the watch to the participant facedown. “Keep spinning it and stop whenever it feels right.”

Following a few more turns of the dial the participant stopped.

“Turn it over and let’s see how you’ve done.”

The watch read 1:07.

“It’s amazing how our subconscious minds can be influenced by things we see only subliminally.”

He unrolled the business card to reveal: Set the watch to 1:07.

Reactions ensued and as they died down, he said, “Do you think your subconscious followed the movements of the marker? Did it react to me saying, ‘it could be one oh seven’ when you thought I said, ‘it could be one or seven’? Or did it react to the flash of this image just before I picked up the watch.”

He placed the watch back onto the table between the rerolled business card and the still open marker. The participant noticed the card created a one. The watch sat in the middle, a perfect zero. And the uncapped marker created a seven.

Method: I’ve always been a fan of random objects spelling out a word as a reveal, but it always felt awkward carrying cards with pictures of objects rather than using organic objects in the performance space. I’ve created a lot of these in English for close-up and stage, and the trick is to not pull a pair of handcuffs out of your pocket to form the number 8 or pull a banana out of your pocket for the letter I, etc. Unless being kinky is part of your character, you want to use objects that feel natural.

This is my presentation for the classic double pin watch force, and the workings should be obvious, so I will mostly cover the choreography.

We start by taking off our watch and placing it on the table. Remove a business card and a sharpie from your pocket. Pull the cap off the marker and place it to the right of the watch.

Write (Set the watch to 1:07) and then place the marker down at an angle near the cap to form the seven.

Roll up the business card and place it to the left of the watch. Leave it for a second and then pick up the watch. It is during this moment that the image of (107) is supposedly being “subconsciously” implanted.

We now perform the classic time force using the double pin feature, ideally with a borrowed watch if you can find one. I set it right in front of them after having them watch the spinning hands. When I’m getting a couple hours from my predicted time, I turn it to myself for them to subconsciously track the time as I set it to 1:07.

All that remains is to work our way through all the supposed implantations of 107 and then place the watch back in the center for the big finish.

And if you can perform the effect and time it to actually end on 1:07 pm during the day, or if you perform it on January 7th , you have an extra bonus to really take it to another level.

Jerx Christmas - Josh Jay - 6:01 AM

While stopping by the kitchen to get a glass of water, I noticed someone peeking out the blinds. I couldn’t see who it was in the shadows, but when I got closer I realized it was Josh Jay.

“What’s going on, buddy?” I asked.

“Nuffin’,” he said. “I’s waiting.”

“Waiting for what, pal?”

“Santy Clause!!” he screamed and jumped up a down.

“Uh, first of all, it’s December 23rd, ding-dong. Secondly, aren’t you fucking 40 or something? What’s going on with you?”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Andi Gladwin give me one of these gestures…

and wave $40 in my face. And I got the hint. So I just said, “Ah, never mind. You know what I hope Santa brings me this year? I hope he brings me the revamped version of your Prism deck. That’s a great trick.”

“My own magic!” Josh shouted.

“That’s right, buddy. That is your own magic. I’m also looking forward to you putting out your Particle System book, covering your stack and your card work. But you’ve been telling me that’s been coming out for years now. You guys bind the books at Vanishing Inc by hand or something? What the fuck. Sorry. Sorry. I lost my temper.” But it didn’t matter. Josh was distracted by his zipper.

“Did you have something you wanted me to share on the site for Christmas, big guy?”

“Yeah!!” he screamed, no doubt waking everyone dozing off in the other room.

What’s this going to be? I wondered. Some shit smeared piece of construction paper? Jesus Christ.

But I just kept remembering that sweet $40. “Oh yeah, what do you want me to share with the people?” I asked.

And then he airdropped to me the following two videos of an outstanding trick he calls Nameless Ship which he hasn’t shared anywhere before.