Rule 3: Keep it Simple
In 1911 Nevil Maskelyne and David Devant, two of the premier magicians of the day, published Our Magic. In the first section, The Art in Magic, Maskelyne outlines 20 rules for magic performance. After well over 100 years, are these rules still relevant, and do they apply to more than magic?
Rule 3: Avoid complexity of procedure, and never tax either the patience or the memory of an audience.
Time for a free magic trick! For this you’re going to need a deck of cards.
Deal out 21 cards from a shuffled deck, and ask a volunteer to choose any one of those cards. They should look at the card, remember it but keep it to themselves, and then replace the card, shuffling the pack of 21 cards again before handing it back to you.
Deal the cards face up into three piles, one card on one pile at a time, asking the spectator to look out for their card. Once dealt, ask them which pile contains their card.
When they reply, pick up the three piles one at a time, ensuring that the pile with their card in is the middle pile.
Repeat the above process two more times, meaning that you will have asked them which pile their card is in three times.
Now, you can deal the cards all into one pile - face up or face down - one card at a time. The 11th card will be their card.
This is often the first (and sometimes only) trick many people learn, yet very few magicians perform this as part of their working set. It’s not because the effect is weak. After all, finding a card from a shuffled pack is pretty impressive, even if it is only half a deck of cards. No, the reason is that, despite the impressive ending, the way you get there is long and dull, and by the end the best you can expect a bit of a smile.
There are much better ways of producing that effect that don’t involve the boring procedure of doing the same thing three times in a row. It was Archimedes who first defined the blindingly obvious fact that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The same is true with communicating ideas and concepts. The less process, procedure, and waffle a person has to endure, the more interest they will pay to your point when it arrives, and the more likely they are to remember it afterwards.
Always try to focus on whatever it is you are trying to get across to your audience. If it’s a joke, your set-up should contain all the necessary information to make your punchline work as well as possible, and not a word more. If you are presenting at a meeting you will probably have multiple pieces of information you need, either to get to the final point, or to keep people up to speed. In this case work out exactly what pieces of information are necessary, and make each one a section. Now provide as little information as is necessary to get across this point. Additional data should be made available to those who want it, as well as allowing time for questions at the end.
Also, remember Rule 2! The information you’re giving should be tailored to your audience. If you’re talking to a room full of rocket scientists you can assume a level of knowledge and understanding of basic principles that won’t be present when explaining the first moon landing to a class of 12 and 13 year olds.
None of this is to say that allegory and storytelling aren’t vital to proper discourse. I chose the 21 Cards trick not just because it’s a routine that can be underwhelming but also as I remember it being performed by Ryan Hayashi, the current European Close-Up Champion, at a magic conference. Ryan presented it in a new and interesting way, using audience participation and showmanship to ensure we didn’t even notice the procedure. Through his skilled delivery, he even managed to fool most of a room of magicians. The lesson is that even the dullest material can be presented in a way that can leave an impression, you just need to understand what is necessary for the presentation.
Of course, when all else fails, remember what Archimedes himself said: Keep it simple, stupid!
TFT
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