🪞 How to practise a magic trick, and how to rehearse a show

Practice: one trick, slowly

Ready means ten times in a row without looking at your hands. Practise until it's boring for you. That's when it becomes amazing for them.

The order that works: a mirror first, because it shows you exactly what the audience will see. Then a teddy or a pet, who won't ask questions. Then one person who loves you. Then everybody. Don't practise in front of the person you most want to amaze: once they have seen it go wrong, they know where to look.

The one-minute challenge from Magic School: Pick one trick. Do it ten times in a row without looking down. Count out loud. Start again from one if you look.

Rehearsal: the whole show, out loud

A rehearsal is the show from the first word to the bow, in order, with the patter, as if the audience were there. It is where you find out that the cards are in the wrong pocket, or that you don't know what to say between two tricks.

Rehearse with Flick is the audience: pick your show, pick a line for each trick, and Flick prompts each part in order. At the end you say how it went, smooth, a wobble or forgot a bit, and get one tip. Nothing is recorded.

A show runs in this order: opener, hello, helper trick, everyone trick, wow trick, closer, bow and goodbye.

How many times?

Practise a trick until it is boring to you. Rehearse the whole show twice, once alone and once for one person, before the real audience. The practice log and the week of magic keep count on paper and on the device.

Little and often beats long and rare. Ten minutes a day for a week teaches a trick better than an hour on Saturday, because hands remember what they did yesterday. If a trick still goes wrong after a week, it is probably a Wizard trick that needs a few more days, or a step to ask a grown-up about; the trick's page says which.