There's a big difference between mind reading & mentalism effects compared with plain old magic tricks. One of the biggest differences is that mind reading relies on the audience needing to really believe in you. With magic you can get away without giving them an explanation because at the end of the day 'it's just magic'. With mind reading and mentalism, the audience needs to buy into your special abilities, whether they are psychic or uncanny psychological manipulation.

This is why scripting your effects is more important if you are to be a convincing mentalist. The professionals you see on TV – including Derren Brown & Criss Angel - are so effective because all their tricks are scripted – word for word - like a actor's would be. They have the added advantage that every trick you see them perform on TV is usually the brain child of 3 or 4 people, sitting in a room writing out each trick and scripting it word for word for the best impact on the audience.

In my opinion, the average mentalist needn't worry about word for word presentations although they must concentrate on one aspect of presentation. All the average mentalist needs to do in order to look like a professional is have a rough enough idea of what they are going to say. You need to create some sort of story behind every trick you do in order for it to be believable.

You can add serious impact to your mind reading effects if you test out a few variations of an effect and see which one works the best. That way you can pick the best impact you received and use that same rough story or explanation from then on. By all means script your effects word for word if you wish, but I've been blowing people away for years with free-styling a rough outline of what I'm going to say and this actually keeps it interesting for me.