You're Doing SvenPads Wrong

We’re coming up on five years of publishing articles on One Ahead. An early article that magicians raved about was about the best ways magicians can use AmazeBox.

Since then, I wrote a similar article about Impression Pads, and today is the day we are going to break down all of the ways magicians are performing SvenPads totally wrong.

Really, it’s a list of ways you can drastically enhance your use of the tool.

What even is a SvenPad?

A SvenPad is a type of forcing pad that allows the performer to force a selection upon the spectator. Usually, this involves riffling through a pad and showing that different options are written on each page. Then, the spectator opens the pad at any page they wish and always see a pre-determined force outcome.

“SvenPads” is a registered trademark of Brett Barry, and he says on his website that no one is to use the term without his permission. That’s not actually how trademarks work and I don’t believe Barry invented the concept, but he has done a lot of work to perfect the manufacturing and popularity of the mentalism tool.

Most magicians first learn the Svengali principle when they purchase a Svengali deck. When you see a magician demonstrating a toy trick deck at a market or in a toy store, it is most likely a Svengali deck.

Due to the short and long lengths of the playing cards, the magician can riffle through them in one direction to see different playing cards, but when the performer riffles in the opposite direction all of the cards appear the same.

Needless to say, as a magic consultant, I recommend magicians own one or two blank SvenPads because they are a useful tool to have ready to use at a moments notice. I say this because I believe it, and also because by saying so, I’ve just drastically reduced the chances of Brett Barry suing me for using the term without his permission.

Most performers use SvenPads in the tried-and-tested totally boring way. To force a celebrity, they write celebrities on each page. To force a food item, they write food items on each page. Boring. Predictable. No, no, no.

You’re Doing SvenPads Wrong

Let’s tackle five ways to greatly improve your use of forcing pads, starting with two clever uses of Dual Reality. Like with any great use of the Dual Reality principle, two sections of the audience experience slightly different, but both fooling, realities of the effect in play.

Usually the smaller section of the audience, often the hero spectator, experiences the less fooling, but still fooling, effect, in favour of providing the larger audience with a far more fooling trick. Dual Reality relies on carefully worded scripting, so take your time to get it right before a performance.

1. Use a Dual Force - Show the audience that each page has categories listed on it, like “Think of a celebrity,” “Think of a city,” “Think of a movie.” When the spectator on stage opens the forcing pad, they’ll see the force page reads “Think of Taylor Swift.” The larger audience will believe that the hero spectator chose the page which read “Think of a pop star” and that the choice of Taylor Swift was one that they made themselves.

2. Use a Gather More - I often use the concept of a Gather More when talking about gathering information. You might ask someone to write their first crush onto a billet, and the audience doesn’t know that the billet also asks them to write down the age they were when they fancied the person. You can do the same in reverse in this variation of a dual force — write “Taylor Swift wearing a Red Baseball Cap” on the force page. Then, after you reveal you know they are thinking of Taylor Swift, you can also predict or reveal an item of clothing the spectator is picturing them with.

3. Use a Lengthy Force - I really love this as a concept, because it creates a broad illusion of freedom. An example of a lengthy force would be if you had someone choose a handful of cards from a deck which each have words written on them, and you ensure just one of the cards is a force. Providing you know the force word is longer than the rest — you can then ask the spectator to look at all the words they chose, and choose the longest word to make the trick more challenging for you. You’ll often see a lengthy force used in book tests when magicians ask spectators to think of a long word on the page. With a SvenPad, you can write multiple words on a page, like Pop Stars — and reveal that the spectator is thinking of two pop stars, before asking them to focus on the second one that came to mind, or the one with the longer name to make things harder.