Jon Armstrong, the amazing card magician, has something that he calls a "Super Hero Theory". It's a formula for making a character for yourself (in magic).
In a nut shell, he says that every super hero (the actual comic ones) has a strength which is his super power, and a weakness. For example Spiderman can climb buildings and shoot spider web, but cannot shoot lasers from his eyes. Or Flash can run really fast, but is not very strong, etc. Even the Superman has Kryptonite.
So he relates this to magic. Basically, as a magician, your character should have SOME abilities, not ALL, and some weaknesses. Even the Superman, who probably has most of the super powers, couldn't freeze people or teleport.
Here is what Jon said about his magic character, and what he does and why:
So when I started doing magic, and well into my magic career, I didn't really have this kind of thinking. I had a character, but I had all the superpowers, which when you think about it, makes little to no sense. I could change the color of the card, and also predict stuff, and make coins jump, and sponge bunnies multiply etc. So I guess I was coming off as "very skilled" guy who learned magic. Which is about every other magician. There was no ME in what I was doing, only with my presentation and personality. But that is only half a character.
I ventured into mentalism after that (while still doing magic, because old habits die hard), and I find it a bit more easier to have a super power in mentalism, as it is not about tricks, but about methods and systems.
So in mentalism, I can read people, influence them, read their body language, take educated guesses. But I cannot bend metal with my mind, I am not psychic, I cannot predict something but I can influence the outcome. Once you start doing this, your character will get new dimension and it will be easier to create "patter" for your effects, and it will be easier to choose effects that will suite your character and super power.
Even though my character is based around psychology and influence, I will still do one little effect, or one little bit within an effect that is totally unexplainable, even with psychology or influence, and leave them with that. So that they will still try to figure out was it real mind reading or was it influence.
So what are your super powers?
In a nut shell, he says that every super hero (the actual comic ones) has a strength which is his super power, and a weakness. For example Spiderman can climb buildings and shoot spider web, but cannot shoot lasers from his eyes. Or Flash can run really fast, but is not very strong, etc. Even the Superman has Kryptonite.
So he relates this to magic. Basically, as a magician, your character should have SOME abilities, not ALL, and some weaknesses. Even the Superman, who probably has most of the super powers, couldn't freeze people or teleport.
Here is what Jon said about his magic character, and what he does and why:
"When I decided that I was going to do card magic exclusively about 10 years
ago, I felt that there should be rules about what I could do that I would rigidly
adhere to. I decided that my character would have no real super human powers.
Instead, he would just know more about cards than anyone really should. Not
that it would be all skill, but that he would have a higher awareness as well as
skill with playing cards because of being around them all the time. I thought of
this as kind of being like Batman, who doesn’t have any real powers, just an
incredible level of all human skills. The way I saw it, I could find a card and make it rise to the top, but I could not make it turn blue or rip it up and put it back
together again. There had to be limits to my gifts, even with cards. By doing
this, I knew that I gave my audience not just a show, but also a character that
they could relate to and care about. There was depth to his personality because
he couldn’t do everything, but what he could do was more amazing because of
this. .
"ago, I felt that there should be rules about what I could do that I would rigidly
adhere to. I decided that my character would have no real super human powers.
Instead, he would just know more about cards than anyone really should. Not
that it would be all skill, but that he would have a higher awareness as well as
skill with playing cards because of being around them all the time. I thought of
this as kind of being like Batman, who doesn’t have any real powers, just an
incredible level of all human skills. The way I saw it, I could find a card and make it rise to the top, but I could not make it turn blue or rip it up and put it back
together again. There had to be limits to my gifts, even with cards. By doing
this, I knew that I gave my audience not just a show, but also a character that
they could relate to and care about. There was depth to his personality because
he couldn’t do everything, but what he could do was more amazing because of
this. .
So when I started doing magic, and well into my magic career, I didn't really have this kind of thinking. I had a character, but I had all the superpowers, which when you think about it, makes little to no sense. I could change the color of the card, and also predict stuff, and make coins jump, and sponge bunnies multiply etc. So I guess I was coming off as "very skilled" guy who learned magic. Which is about every other magician. There was no ME in what I was doing, only with my presentation and personality. But that is only half a character.
I ventured into mentalism after that (while still doing magic, because old habits die hard), and I find it a bit more easier to have a super power in mentalism, as it is not about tricks, but about methods and systems.
So in mentalism, I can read people, influence them, read their body language, take educated guesses. But I cannot bend metal with my mind, I am not psychic, I cannot predict something but I can influence the outcome. Once you start doing this, your character will get new dimension and it will be easier to create "patter" for your effects, and it will be easier to choose effects that will suite your character and super power.
Even though my character is based around psychology and influence, I will still do one little effect, or one little bit within an effect that is totally unexplainable, even with psychology or influence, and leave them with that. So that they will still try to figure out was it real mind reading or was it influence.
So what are your super powers?