One of the primary worries magicians have is having a magic effect going wrong. Inevitably, a magic trick will go wrong at some point and you will need to deal with it. Your status is at stake and you want to minimise or eliminate as much embarrassment or damage to your status as possible by taking the appropriate action.

Prevention is better than cure

1. Practice

There is no substitute for practice. If you practice enough you will minimise your chances of making a mistake, however we are only human. You should spend time learning a trick until you are totally confident that it won’t fail. If you are in any doubt, simply perform something else. There are many self-working effects out there that are equally as impressive as some of the more difficult ones. Pick an easy to perform trick and focus on your presentation.

2. Attitude – Build a rapport with your audience

As with any magic presentation, it’s essential that you build up a good rapport with your audience. If the audience realises that you have made a mistake and they like you, they will be more sympathetic towards your mistake and allow you to recover. I once performed a levitation effect once using a piece of invisible thread for a group of people. After the performance one of the audience members said to me that everyone at the table could see the thread because of the light reflecting off it from their angle. I hadn’t noticed this at the time of performing and the audience had sat through the whole trick even though the method had been exposed. They weren’t fooled, but they sat through the whole trick without saying a word as they appreciated me and my effort to entertain them. This is only possible if you have a good rapport with your audience.

So what do you do about it when it does fail.

1. Do not panic

The audience may not know that you have failed at this point so all is not lost. Remain calm and try not to show any signs that your trick has gone wrong. 

2. Try to recover

Improvise if you can to recover the effect that you were performing. If you can think of a way to do recover the effect, continue.

3. Make a smooth transition into another effect

If you can recover the trick you were performing, do so. If not, you may be able to transition into another related effect that you already know. Say you were performing a “pick a card” style effect and you’ve failed to find their selected card, you could use an Ambitious Card routine as an excellent way to recover. Simply look confused at getting the wrong card and then pretend that you have an idea. Say to the spectator “Oh! I know what I have forgot to do! You haven’t signed your card” then ask the spectator what their card was, remove the cards and ask them to sign it. I then perform the ambitious card as if it was the effect that I intended to perform all along. You could also use an invisible deck or a brainwave deck as a great method of getting out of an awkward situation too. If you lose their card you can ask them to name it, and show it to be reversed in another deck.

4. If all else fails, own up to the mistake, laugh it off and move on

Magicians often pretend that something has gone wrong when it really hasn’t. Your audience will likely be well aware of this so use that to your advantage. Failing being able to recover, you do not want to dwell on your error. Mistakes happen but you really want to minimise the damage where possible. You can simply admit your mistake and quickly move on. 

I have often made a mistake in a trick and admitted that I had made a mistake, but the audience simply wouldn’t believe me. They assumed I was joking or trying to trick them. You could laugh at your own mistakes or you could even tell a story about a time when a trick went horribly wrong. Its not the end of the world when a magic trick goes wrong. Don’t take it too seriously and your audience won’t either. Simply laugh it off and move on to a different trick.