Young Writers Society

So I'm planning a story that takes heavy influence from classic magicians and endurance artists—Houdini, Copperfield, David Blaine, and acts like Penn and Teller. The main character in my story loves these magicians and more, and she strives to learn the secrets behind all the tricks she possibly can. I'm checking out some documentaries (and entertaining shows, no lie) about magic tricks and the magicians behind them, but I'd love to get some feedback from the community.

So here's my questions:

What are some of your favorite magic tricks? Who did them?

Who are your favorite magicians? Why are they your favorite?

What do you recommend as a source for checking out modern street magicians and Vegas-style magic?

I have a soft spot for Murray Hatfield because I went to see his show every December and he was the only regular act, and I've lost all my old programs so I couldn't give you the names of other magicians.

This was his stock standard magic routine. He is very good at it, and my favourite was when the girl in the box turned into one of his backup dancers who wasn't even on stage and he called the spotlight from the back of the theatre. About 15 seconds if that had passed between pulling the curtain up and wait where in the world is he what.

I also love it when he has a photograph of his wife that he runs through gears and she peels out of it.

You're going to want to narrow it down from large magic— appearing and disappearing, being in two places at once, escape artists tricks, things that are big stage shows— or small magic— card tricks, coin tricks, and close-up slight of hand.

When it comes to small magic, Shin Lim is the current king of that circuit. He's fooled Penn and Teller not once but twice.

I follow very very very few magicians now (Shin Lim's instagram is drop dead gorgeous and full of reposts from other magicians at about his level), but Fool Us is going to give you an incredible range of magic+ some breakdown of how the tricks are done in code words.

I personally prefer large tricks just for the sheer theatrics factor, which is probably why the only close-up magician I remember is Shin Lim— he's got that theatric air.

Small tricks feel too parlour-y to me, they feel almost pedestrian, and I associate magicians with the big flashy tricks and "is this theatre rigged" type thoughts. I don't trust residency shows because the theatre could be so easily rigged, and it feels much more authentic when there's your average high school theatre that just gets turned into a "what. in the world. was that."

Close up magic still breaks my brain, especially with the level of card manipulation that happens with Shin Lim.

I also have a thing for bird magic, but I'm always worried they could get hurt.

@Rosendorn SO MUCH LOVE THANKS A TON <3333333

@blueafrica yes!!! I want to hear all about it <3 And that totally counts!

okay I'm DEFINITELY ANSWERING THIS but it took me a zillion times longer than expected to finish my Story Interviews questions for the night. but I just wanted to let you know I *shall* answer even though most likely my answer will not be helpful

WOW I AM SO SORRY I TOOK SO LONG TO GET TO THIS. I was working on it one night and then had to go to bed, and then OFC I FORGOT. But here it is nonetheless. Additional apologies in advance because my memory is legitimately terrible obviously and my grandfather has been dead several years now and I've been away from home even longer than that.

But basically we used to do a magic show every year.

Some context:

My mom's family owns a pattern-making company (for cars, not dresses, this is Michigan we're talking about), and my grandpa still had an incredibly messy office there after he retired, and probably like 90% of the storage space up in the shop attic was his stuff - photography, puppets, books, magic tricks. Like, so many magic tricks. Loads of magic tricks. Most of which I probably never even saw.

Magic was just one of his things. Like, he went to college for chemistry, went to war in Korea, ran his dad's old pattern company...but then for fun he did magic. So he had all these tricks and props and sets and things he'd acquired over the years, and he would sometimes do little magic shows for our birthdays and stuff.

And every year my mom's hometown has this festival in early September, and the Shop (the family name for the pattern company) always used to throw a big party. So a bunch of people I didn't know would come, and we'd have tables set up in the parking lot if it was nice out or in the machine shop if it was not, and we'd have a buffet and everyone would eat, and then we'd do a show for everyone, and then we'd all sit around and watch the fireworks over the rooftops of the buildings nearby. It was a good spot to see them.

So as I got older I kind of got to produce the magic show. Whoever was performing (usually my grandfather and at least one of my sisters and one of my cousins) would learn whatever tricks he thought we should do that year and once they got it down we'd time each trick and devise an order for that show and time the whole thing and pick music and everything.

Except it wasn't just music - he'd usually have, like, some sort of awkward story to go along wtih the trick. Like I remember there was one trick with milk that vanished from a milk pitcher, and instead of just doing the trick with a flourish to music or something, he'd tell a whole story about his nonexistent cat.

(He was a writer, too, so that was quite possibly part of it. But I'm a writer, and I hate telling stories aloud to people in just about any context.)

Here's a video of the vanishing milk trick.

I think the coolest thing we ever did was what he called "black magic," which is not Evil Magic(™) but rather when you use a lot of black velvet in the show to create an optical illusion. Basically, you have a black velvet curtain as a backdrop, and then my sisters would wear black velvet dresses and a black velvet cape with a black velvet hood, and they'd do a magic trick all covered up like that, except for their hands, which would be in white gloves, and all the velvet things would sort of disappear into each other so that it looked like disembodied hands were doing the tricks.

If you skip ahead to about 2:42 in this video, there's something that looks like that. There's more at 3:47. Obviously I can't swear they did it the same way (and we didn't have awesome black lights or such large tricks we did that way), but that can at least give you an idea of the effect.

But aside from the fact that that's the only thing I can remember in terms of telling you how it worked, there's the fact that my grandpa made us take the Magician's Oath every year before we started work on the magic show. you can see how seriously I take it Tbh I hate that Masked Magician guy who had that show where he revealed all these magic tricks other magicians had used. It's just bad form.

Omg yes I love all this so much <333 Thank you for taking the time to write that up for me!