Pre-Climax Summary
/“Oh, shit. I’m gonna cum!”
No. Not that type of Pre-Climax Summary.
Jonah B. writes:
I wanted get your opinion on something I see as somewhat of a trope in magic. The trope is to summarise all of the strong, fair points of a trick to the participant just before the climax. For example, 'Remember, you shuffled the cards, you thought of any card at random, you shuffled the cards again and I never went near the cards. I was blindfolded and upside-down the whole time, and I have been illiterate since birth, so even if I did see the card I wouldn't be able to read it...' and so on. It seems to be common wisdom among magicians that this kind of summary of the 'fair' moments makes the trick stronger. I see the logic of this approach, and I've done it many times myself, especially as, in my experience, some participants actually do forget the fact that they shuffled the cards etc. Stylistically, though, I wonder if it comes across a little cliche, or at worst, desperate. If the emphasis on the fair points of the trick is strong enough throughout the routine, does this summary need to happen at the end? I'm torn, because it seems to make the trick seem stronger, but the experience feel worse. In other art forms where the audience is called upon to remember earlier parts of the narrative (I'm thinking in theatre, film or music), allusions or refrains that echo previous elements of the story seem to be more artistically satisfying than direct flashbacks or repetition ('Remember when that happened?').
What do you think? —JB
This is a great question.
I find the Pre-Climax Summary to be something of a necesasry evil at times. It frequently has to be done to remind someone of the conditions of the effect. But it also does come across as semi-pathetic in practice. And it certainly gives the performance the rhythm of a magic trick, rather than a more normal type of human interaction.
Sometimes you can’t get around the PCS, but I’ll give you some potential alternative ideas and advice.
Self-Assurance
I fucking hate mayonaisse.
Okay, Andy, that was an unexpected left turn. Where is this going?
Stay with me.
At a restaurant I’ll frequently find myself ordering a sandwich and saying, “No mayo.”
And then I get the sandwich and it’s fucking slathered with that shit.
This happened enough times that I would find myself reiterating it when I ordered. “You got that I wanted that without mayo, yes?”
That’s fine. But I could tell that asking that would annoy some people. As a competent person myself, I get it. It can be annoying when people treat you as if you’re incompetent. And asking for something with “no mayo” and then clarifying “no mayo” 14 seconds later suggests you don’t think the person is super competent.
But the issue is, there ARE a lot of incompetent people and I don’t know who I’m dealing with the moment I step into your sandwich shop.
So I came up with this technique.
“I’ll take the club sandwich. No mayo on that. And… I’ll have the fries. And a Coke please. I think that’s it.” Then, before the waiter leaves or I walk away from the counter, I say, “Oh… wait… did I mention ‘no mayo’ on the sandwich?”
You see? Now my message isn’t: “I think you might have screwed up.” It’s: “I think I might have screwed up. Can you reassure me?”
You can do something similar with the PCS.
Instead of saying, “And remember, you shuffled this deck before we even started.”
When you get to the climax you can say, “And if you look at the cards—oh hold on… I had you shuffle the deck at the start, yes? Okay, good. I thought so, but I wasn’t 100% sure. This will be much crazier knowing you shuffled at the beginning. Okay, so if you look at the cards…,”
That’s the idea. Instead of reminding you, I’m assuring myself.
This won’t work if you have a whole litany of stuff to summarize. But you can use it to clarify an important condition.
Clarifying Conditions
Last year I wrote a post (and a couple of follow-ups) on the biggest takeaway I’d learned in my time testing magic. And that was the idea that you cannot really overly clarify the conditions of an effect. People forget too easily. And if you take the standard (bad) magician advice that you shouldn’t tell them what to notice(e.g., “Don’t tell them your hand is empty before you put it in your pocket. Simply show it empty”) then they are even more likely to forget, becuase you didn’t mention what they were supposed to take note of.
That’s the whole point of the Pre-Climax Summary in the first place: reminding them of the important stuff they might have forgotten.
However, this is less necessary if you take the time to properly note these things as they’re happening.
Don’t be afraid to do this. If you’re the person demonstrating some incredible power, the EXACT thing you would do is make sure people understood all the conditions along the way that make this particularly impossible.
Third-Party Summarizing
But often, I’m not the one demonstrating an incredible power. In those cases, it might come off as weird for me to overly clarify the conditions as we go if I’m trying to play the part of someone who is also “along for the ride,” as opposed to the person driving the bus.
Fortunately, in those situations its even easier to justify the ending summary. You just treat it like a checklist to make sure you’ve done everything correctly.
So, for example, if I’m showing them some sort of psychological test, or we’re following a ritual my grandfather wrote in the back of one of his weird books, or we’re plaing an obscure game, then I can pause before the ending and go over the instructions or the rules or whatever and act as if I’m just clarifying to myself that we did this right. The instructions or rules don’t necessarily have to be phsycially in front of me. If they’re not I can just act like I’m running through them in my head.
“Okay… let’s see if we go this right. So we started by shuffling the cards, yes? And then you freely eliminated one of the the halves? Okay. So then we cut the remaining cards into four smaller piles. Then we made that blood sacrifice to the Guardian of the Dark Water Bog. Okay… looks like we got all that right. Let’s see what happened…. the four aces! Wow!”
Minimize
“And you shuffled. And you stopped whenever you wanted. And you cut the cards at places you chose. And you turned over the cards yourself.”
Does all of that matter? Probably not. Don’t summarize every last detail. Just the imporant ones. In this case, all that likely matters is that they remember they shuffled the deck at the start of the trick. Pointing out all those other details will just bury that most imporant point.
The nice thing about performing socially for friends and family is that you usually get a feel for the type of people who don’t need you to do the pre-climax summary because they were attuned to everything all along.
If at all possible, roll it into the presentation, But if that’s not possible I probably wouldn’t elminate entirely. It’s perhaps better to come off as pedantic than to waste their time with a trick they can’t fully appreciate because they forgot some element of the trick that really makes it sing.