"Whatever version of the torn & restored newspaper you decide to learn, here's a protocol to get it down. Make up three hundred papers.

Study whatever illustrations there are in the instructions.

Speaking slowly, make an audio recording of the instructions, three or four times all the way through.

Stand in front of a full-length mirror, pick up a paper and turn on the recording. Watching yourself in the mirror and NOT looking at your hands, tear and restore 50 newspapers, slowly following your recorded instructions.

When you feel comfortable with the newspaper in your hand and you are doing it without error, re-record the instructions speaking at a normal speed.

Tear up and restore another 50-75 papers. Doing the movements slowly at first will train your muscle memory and make you comfortable with the movements.

Once you've torn and restored at least 150 papers over a few days, you're on your way. With the remaining papers practice them as part of your regular routine, determining where you'll put the paper and how to pick it up so you don't fumble in the early handling.

After you've gone through the 300 papers you've prepared, you should have it down and not have to think about it as you do it.

That is exactly how I learned to do the Slydini Newspaper Tear when I was a kid.

Starting off slowly, learning the proper movements from the precise instructions that Slydini wrote up, prevents the student from learning bad habits that will require un-learning later. The Slydini instructions are quite detailed and there is no "flawed assumption" in them...not from my years of experience anyway.

I have torn and restored literally thousands of papers without a problem over my decades of performing, using Frakson's plot/presentation and the Slydini methodology, learned exactly as I described the process.

Because I don't have to think about what my hands and arms are going to do I can adjust my presentation to the needs of the audience...a little slower here....a little faster there...a look or expression at the appropriate moment for the particular audience...all without thinking about what I have to do next. That gives me the opportunity to interact with the audience, to look at them, smile, talk if I want, all the while knowing that my hands and arms will be doing the right thing. Doing the mechanics on auto-pilot gives me the opportunity to customize the presentation to the audience, as every experienced pro worth his salt can do.

When I performed this as a kid at a SAM show, one of the old timers wrote that I had "torn and restored a newspaper the way it should be done." This comes out of knowing what you're doing, not floundering around until you accidentally stumble on the proper movements and then hope to remember them.

At the beginning the movements may seem mechanical , but like learning to dance, new movements are clumsy only because they are new and unknown.

By the time anyone who follows this protocol finishes his 300th newspaper, he'll have something few others have: a presentation he can rely on."


-David Alexander , March 13th, 2007
https://forums.geniimagazine.com/viewtopic.php?t=5990#p66154

On Jul 5, 2024, Gerald wrote:
Some folks get distracted from the task at hand if magic books, props, videos, etc. are around. If you are easily distracted, put the props to the trick you are working on or want to learn out on the table. Have no mess or other props on the table. You might have a note pad and a pencil handy to jot down ideas about the trick and start a storyboard.