My main goal whenever I do script consulting is to ask useful questions, which means any question that helps you examine and improve any part of your act. Some questions are easy: Can you trim some of your dialogue? (The answer is yes.) Some are hard: How can you make this trick more personal to you, while not making everything about you?
Today I’m going to ask the hardest questions I have. I’ve asked these questions of people at many levels, from The Magic Castle Junior program to experienced working pros. And many magicians, at all levels, struggle to answer them. A large number of magicians seem not to have really considered these questions, or at least, not from the audience’s perspective.
I try to consider everything from the audience’s perspective. That’s the biggest single benefit of scripting magic, I think; it helps you consider everything from the audience’s perspective.
So: Think of any trick you do that has multiple phases: Ambitious Card, Oil and Water, Cups and Balls, Three-Card Monte, etc.
The first question is: How did you put the phases in that order?