Magic School

1. Your magician name

Every magician has a stage name and a style.

Before you learn another trick, pick who you are on stage. A name does half the work of a show: it tells the audience what sort of magic is coming before you do anything at all.

Styles to pick from: funny (jokes between every trick), mysterious (slow, quiet, long pauses), sciencey (you explain just enough to make it stranger) or spooky (lights low). You can change your mind next week.

Then pick one catchphrase and use it every single time, right at the magic moment. Flick's is "Presto!" — and "Presto… ish" when it doesn't work, which happens to everybody.

⏱ One-minute challenge: Say your full stage name out loud, with your catchphrase after it, five times. Pick the one that made you grin.

No name yet? Let Flick help: pick a big word, a magic thing and a title, three taps, and you have one of twenty-seven stage names, with a name card to print. It stays on this device, and it has a page of its own too: the magician name generator.

Tricks that teach it: The Crystal Ball Prediction, The Countdown Card, The Heads or Tails Mind Reader.

2. Patter: what you say

A trick is a story, not a thing that happens.

The words a magician says are called patter. Without them, a vanishing coin is just a coin you can't see any more. With them, it's a coin that melted.

Every good patter has three parts. A hook ("This pencil came from a wizard's desk"), a build-up (something that makes the audience wait), and then the magic moment — where you say nothing at all for one whole second. That silence is the trick.

Every trick page in this shop has "Magic words to say" on it. Copy them the first time. Then change them until they sound like you, because they should.

⏱ One-minute challenge: Take the Rubber Pencil and rewrite its patter as three sentences of your own. Say it to a mirror.

Tricks that teach it: The Rubber Pencil, The Bending Spoon, The Stretching Finger.

3. Misdirection

People look where you look.

Misdirection is not about being fast. It's about deciding where everyone's eyes go. If you look hard at your right hand, every person in the room looks at your right hand, and your left hand can do absolutely anything.

Three things move attention: your own eyes, a question ("What's your name?"), and something bigger than the secret happening somewhere else. Tearing paper loudly works because ears pull eyes.

The other half of misdirection is time. A secret move done one second before anyone is watching for it is invisible, even done slowly.

⏱ One-minute challenge: Do a trick for your family and watch their eyes instead of your hands. Say afterwards where they were looking.

Tricks that teach it: The Floating Pencil, The Ghost Pencil, The Haunted Rubber Band.

4. Practise like a pro

Ready means ten times in a row without looking at your hands.

There's an order to this that works. A mirror first, because a mirror shows you exactly what the audience will see. Then a stuffed animal or a pet, who will not ask questions. Then one person who loves you. Then everybody.

Don't practise a trick in front of the person you want to amaze. Once they've seen it go wrong, they know where to look for ever.

Practise until it's boring for you. That's when it becomes amazing for them.

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

Tricks that teach it: The Jumping Rubber Band, Thumb Off, Easy Cups and Balls.

5. Working with helpers

A helper should walk away feeling brilliant.

Ask, don't grab: "Can I have a helper? What's your name?" Then use their name for the rest of the trick. It's the easiest way to make a stranger into your audience.

Give your helper something real to do — pick, cut, hold, shuffle, choose a number. The more the trick happens in their hands, the more impossible it is, and the less work your hands have to do.

And the Magician's Code's fourth promise: never make a helper look silly. The surprise is the point; they are not the joke. When they get something wrong, it was your fault, out loud.

⏱ One-minute challenge: Practise just the asking: "Can I have a helper? What's your name?" Then thank them and let them take the clap.

Tricks that teach it: The Spooky Floating Cup, The Crayon Mind Reader, The Magic Mind Reader.

6. Outs: when things go wrong

Have a joke ready and a spare trick in your pocket.

Every magician in history has had a trick fall apart in front of people. The ones you'd call good are just the ones who had a line ready.

Three outs, in order. One: finish anyway — many tricks have a second ending, and every trick page here has an "If something goes wrong". Two: laugh. "Even wizards have off days" buys you the room back. Three: move on to the next trick immediately, and never explain.

What you must never do is apologise twice, or say "it normally works". The audience only knows something went wrong if you tell them.

⏱ One-minute challenge: Write one funny line for when a trick fails. Learn it like you learned the trick.

Tricks that teach it: The Broken Toothpick Restored, Which Hand?, The Elbow Vanish.

7. The big finish

End on your best one, then stop.

A show is four to six tricks and ten to fifteen minutes. That is plenty. The hardest skill in magic is stopping while they still want more.

Put your strongest, most visual trick last. Say your magic word, hold still for a second so the picture lands, then bow. A bow tells the audience it's time to clap, which is a kindness to them.

Then say "Thank you" and go. Don't do one more. Don't explain the first one. Walk off while the room is loud.

⏱ One-minute challenge: Practise just the last ten seconds: magic word, one second of nothing, bow, "Thank you!" Then leave the room.

Tricks that teach it: The Salt Shaker Balance, The Spelling Bee, The Magic Number 1089.