How To Put Magic in Words that Makes People Need to Read Them

And it is magic

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

Speaking of magic, I was watching The Prestige last night (great film).

I was struck by something seemingly innocuous Michael Caine’s character said.

“A good magic trick captures the imagination.”

On the surface, it makes total sense. It was kinda a throw-away line. But the more I thought about it, the more I was gobsmacked. I had to pause the movie.

What the hell does that mean?

I’m going to try to compare magic to writing. Let’s see if I can pull it off…

Capturing imagination

At the end of the movie, Michael Caine has a monologue:

“When presented with something amazing, you aren’t trying to work out the trick. You prefer to be amazed.”

In other words, when presented with the unknown (e.g. “where did the birdy go?”) your mind has to fill in the gap. That’s where your “imagination” comes in. Another word for imagination is unconscious mind.

This is proven science — the unconscious mind deals with unknown things by projecting “fantasies” about what…