Stepladders & Demon Traps

Stepladders & Demon Traps makes you a thoughtful, confident creator of your own magic.

"This is the best thing I've read this year."
Mark Elsdon

The difference between a good magician and a great magician isn't the tricks they do, the clothes they wear, or the scripts they write. It isn't the choices they make. It's the purpose.

Stepladders & Demon Traps advocates purpose in the creation of a magic routine. We make countless choices when creating magic, but we're not always making those choices consciously. In his book, Nicolaj Christensen reminds us to identify a creative vision and actively explore and cherry-pick the most fitting ideas. In a nutshell, form follows function.

Inside Stepladders & Demon Traps, Nicolaj will teach you seven routines (close-up and stand-up, with and without playing cards), and provide case studies of the various choices he made to get closer to his creative vision. Along with the tricks, you'll also read five essays about how to create a deliberate creative process:

• A summary of the routines as part of a larger vision.
• A reminder that changes cannot be made in isolation.
• A deconstruction of brainstorming as an analytical tool.
• A helpful distinction between theme and premise.
• A discussion of the kinds of subject matter that come with the territory of a magician. Nicolaj suggests that if a magic trick doesn't take into account the layers of meaning inherent to magic-as-magic, the work might be fundamentally out of touch with itself.

If you're the analytical type, you'll enjoy the message of Stepladders & Demon Traps. But if you mostly go by instinct, you'll love it even more for giving you new tools to create with.

218 pages, 57 hand-drawn illustrations