Navigating Expectations in Magic

Is there a point at which a routine becomes too strong or too perfect to be believable? Maybe so. It’s a question often raised in magic.

But there’s another kind of “too much” that gets far less attention.

It has to do with expectations.

In a sense, magic is always built around expectations. An art grounded in surprise and secret methods relies on expectation as a foundational element: the lack of expectation when something suddenly happens, producing surprise; alongside the presence of expectation (say, the idea that a thread is involved) only to reveal there is none, producing deception or our expectations of what is possible, only to be proven wrong; and so on.

It’s easy to see how the relationship between performer and audience hinges on a delicate balance of trust and expectation.

We’re rarely aware of how we use expectations.

Sometimes expectations are too high, and they clash with what we actually do.

Other times, we inadvertently set false expectations, leading the audience to believe something will happen and then, disappointingly, it doesn’t.

A few years ago, I was proud of a spelling trick I had created. The spectator would associate a chosen card with both a celebrity and a location somewhere in the world. Based on those two elements, I would create a narrative to reveal the chosen card.

Finally, by spelling out the two elements of the story when dealing the deck, the selected card would appear at that final position.

The more I performed it, the more often I heard the same comment: “I thought you were going to reveal the celebrity and the place too!” At that point, I’d find myself explaining that I couldn’t reveal those because… well, why?

I had no good reason — it simply wasn’t possible.

In their minds—rightfully—that was supposed to be my job.

Those elements clearly needed to be presented differently within the routine, so I then restructured it into something entirely new. The process was illuminating.

I never claimed I would “guess what they were thinking,” but the mere act of introducing those elements—a celebrity and a place—into a card trick, generated an expectation I wasn’t prepared for.