Magic Should Tell a Story
So, as I continue my never ending process of developing a magic show and routines within the show that have a good start, middle, and end ( a useful narrative technique) I saw this link from Bizarro to a video which, says all good stories basically:
- Tell a story to a certain point, and then need a ...
- But, then or
- Therefore ...
- And also have multiple things going on so that at each crescendo of each story, we can cut back to ... what's happened elsewhere and get that story to it's next (but/therefore)
For magic purposes, if applied to the "snap silks" we have a single sink handkerchief. music playing. But! With a snap there's another. And But! with a snap there's another... and so on for a bit. By the end, there's one last one. THEREFORE, at least as Anastasia performs it, that seems to be it, and all the produced silk hankies are lifted, BUT ... there are many many more all coming out in a flourish!
In the full routine context the first time an additional silk appears is unique, and then serves to lead the audience down a certain path.
This leads towards the kitten story theory which I will discuss in an upcoming post.