Stepladders & Demon Traps by Nicolaj Christensen

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

Why do magicians ask people to say “stop” instead of “freeze” or “hold it”? Why do they pretend to fail a trick? Why does a routine include a magic effect at all?

Stepladders & Demon Traps advocates purpose in the creation of a magic routine. Countless choices are always made but not always consciously, so 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.

Teaching seven routines (close-up and stand-up, with and without playing cards), Nicolaj provides a case study of various choices he has made to fit the elements of each routine to its vision, trying to support what’s at the center of each premise and clean out the clutter.

Five essays speak more generally about 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