As seen on "The Magic Secrets Basement"
Practice the easy and the complex: Some tricks you will notice that are pretty easy to do. You can be doing it in five minutes. But still, you need to practice, until all your movements are smooth and look natural. Sometimes, a trick is easy to perform, but needs some "tricky" movement to get it right. This kind of tricks deserve a greater amount of practice.
Don't ever reveal how a trick is done: You may be tempted, or even tortured, but you MUST NOT reveal the secret of your trick. Why? Because your audience will lost faith in magic, and faith in YOU and other magicians. That's why. You will no longer be seen as a magician, and will have no chance for making them believe that you can really make wonderful and incredible things.
Practice in front of a mirror: So you can't reveal your secret. Therefore, you must practice alone. The best way of doing this is to practice in front of the perfect audience, your reflection. Practice many times your movements, until they look convincing, even for you. There will be times that even you will be deceived by yourself. It's true. There are movements, say vanishing something, that even though you know where the object really is, you ask yourself "Where is it?". But, of course, the only way of doing this is by practicing in front of a mirror.
Practice with "gimmicks": Many tricks are done by using gimmicks. Gimmicks are devices to aid you performing a trick. When using such devices, you must practice the double, because it involves concealing something extra. For example, you may use a piece of transparent tape for doing a card trick. The piece of tape is your gimmick. You can imagine how difficult will it be to do a card trick with a piece of tape. That's why you must practice so your audience can not see the tape.
Misdirection: Misdirection is also very important in magic. Misdirection is to direct audience eyes and minds to one place or trail. For example, when vanishing an object, you take the object in one hand and place it in the other. There the process of misdirection starts. You have to make people believe that the object is in your hand and that you're doing magic movements, and throwing magic powders and blowing. While you do this (the misdirection) you are doing your dirty work with the other hand. Get it? Here are some things to keep in mind when doing misdirection: The audience will look where you look - This is always true. If you're not looking at your pocket, they will not be inclined to look at it, unless you look at it.
The longer you carry peoples mind along a false trail, the more efective the climax of the trick - Again, misdirection gives you the ability to take people along a false trail. This trail is anything you can imagine. For example, ask a spectator for a small object, "place" the object in your hand, place it under handkerchief, burn the kandkerchief, take the object in your hand, put it in your mouth , swallow it, drink water, take a sealed envelope, give it to expectator, the expectator opens it and there's his object.
Repetition - This is another way of doing misdirection. By repeating over and over movements that look suspicious, and demonstrating the audience that they're not suspicious at all, will make them trust the movement, giving you time to do your thing.
