Tactics Tuesdays: 7 Example Stories for Early Conversation

In a comment on my article “How to Tell a Story that Rivets and Captivates”, Greg remarks:

Very interesting article, thank you, I really appreciated it. But now that I know how to tell a story (the form), the problem is what stories to tell (the content). A long list of story examples to tell (one sentence per example, not the complete stories, just the basic idea) (like 30 stories exemples at least) could help in developing or finding one's own stories. Because I don't know about others, but for me, I feel like I don't have any stories to tell.

Sure, story examples. We can talk about some of those.

For this article, I’m going to focus on early conversation stories, since that’s the place the most guys have the most trouble. E.g., “How do I get the storytelling started with a girl I’m talking to?”

We’ll break it down into two categories for this piece: “crazy thing” stories and “cool DHV” stories. Before we begin, I want to preface with a note on the ‘recency’ requirement for early conversation stories.

 

Early Convo Stories Should Generally Be Recent

When you tell a story in early conversation, it usually needs to be a recent one.

The reason for this is because recency gives the story conversational relevance. What that is: anytime you tell a story, people are not just listening to the story itself, but questioning your motives for telling it. “Why is he telling me this?” is a key question she must be able to answer.

“Oh, it just happened to him, so it’s top of mind and he just wants to tell the story,” is a very easy and socially acceptable answer. Any story you tell about something that very recently happened to you automatically gets this framing.

How recent must it be? It’s context dependent. For example:

• If you’re seated around the fireplace at a ski lodge talking with a girl you just met, because it’s a relaxed conversation in a stationary, more intimate setting, ‘recent’ could be as much as months ago.

• On the other hand, if you’ve just approached a girl in a deafeningly loud nightclub where distraction is everywhere and her friends are vying for her attention alongside you, ‘recent’ typically means something that happened in the past five minutes.

Just as a general guide, if you’re talking to a girl in any type of nightlife spot that actually affords you to have conversations (corner of the bar; smoking lounge; rooftop; patio; anywhere away from the loud, chaotic dance floor), ‘recent’ means somewhere up to last weekend or perhaps the weekend before.

If you’re talking to a girl you met anywhere during the day, or outside of nightlife, ‘recent’ might mean a month ago.

If you’re in a seated, more intimate setting, ‘recent’ can mean a couple of months ago.

If it’s over text or online, the recency depends on the setting the girl is in when you talk to her. If she’s relaxing at home ‘recent’ can mean a lot farther back than if she’s talking to you while she walks down the sidewalk with a group of girlfriends on her way to the club.

The rule of thumb: the more distractions there are vying for her attention from you, the more RECENT your ‘recent stories’ must be to be relevant to the conversation and congruent with the setting!

 

3 Crazy Thing Story Examples

“This CRAZY thing just happened to me!”

The ‘crazy thing’ story is a nice pattern interrupt that grabs a woman’s attention and centers it on you. What’s the crazy thing you’re about to tell her, she wonders? Is it funny? Could it be something dangerous? Is this information that she might need to know? Because she does not know, she gets present and tunes in closely.

Below, I’ll share three different types of ‘crazy stories’ you can tell girls.

 

Almost Died Story

You don’t have a near-death experience every day. Or do you?

Actual near-death experiences are a bit heavy for early conversation. For instance, I was in a car accident where a girl driver caused another girl driver to plow into my driver’s side door while driving down the highway, causing me to spin across four lanes and into a 10-foot concrete wall. My car was wrecked, and before the crash, as I spun helplessly down the road, I did not know if I would live or die. It’s an interesting story, but it’s not ‘early conversation’ fodder. People don’t know how to respond to a story like that if you hit them with it early.

On the other hand, humorous, exaggerated “almost died” stories can be great. You probably have things happen to you a couple times a week that can be exaggerated into “I almost died” stories… let me give you some examples:

• “I almost died on my way over here. Someone left a manhole uncovered… if I took one more step without looking down I’d be hanging with the Ninja Turtles.”

• “I had a near-death experience this week. Some lunatic put super spicy chili in some tacos I ordered… I thought they were going to have to rush me to the hospital.”

• “You know I almost lost my life last weekend? It was my fault; I went out with this complete idiot who gets blacked out drunk and picks fights with everyone. I ended up having to calm down five REALLY big guys… I thought they were going to crush him AND me just for trying to defend the guy.”

• “Ever have a pothole just jump up out of nowhere when you’re driving somewhere? I hit one yesterday and man, the hit was so hard, it sounded like I crashed my car. I thought my tire was going to blow out and I’d careen off the road. The streets around here are deathtraps.”

If you have situationally relevant near-death stories to some setting you’re in, those can get around the recency requirement for early conversation because they have another relevance factor in their favor.

For instance, once while walking down a city street at night, a huge chunk of concrete slammed into the sidewalk not twenty feet ahead of me, and actually directly in front of some old man walking just ahead of me. We both looked up at the 15-story apartment building we were walking next to… the only thing we could think was some part of the structure had fallen off and fell. If that old guy or me had been just a little closer, we’d have had our heads knocked in. The lesson that taught me was, “Don’t walk too close to tall buildings if you have a choice.”

I tell that story to girls I’m walking with on the sidewalk, even if I just struck up a conversation with them there, and it makes it simple to move us both away from being too close to the buildings. Which I want to do anyway, because even if that’s only happened to me once in 15 years of living in cities, hey – I got the message. “Beware of falling building chunks.”

 

Got Yelled At

Did some nutcase yell at you recently? Well, it’s perfect early conversation story material!

Examples:

• “I got yelled at by a homeless guy on my walk home from work tonight. It wasn’t exactly clear what he was saying, but apparently I stole his dog and I need to pay him $10 million.”

• “So I just yelled at by some girl because apparently she thought I was the guy who was hitting on her friend earlier in some sort of creepy way or whatever. I literally just got here and I’ve never seen this girl or her friend before in my life but I guess ‘men all look the same’!”

• “I got yelled at by security earlier because apparently that bathroom over there is just for VIPs. Also, it seems I am not a VIP. The more you know…”

The second example is a subgenre of the ‘got yelled at’ topic: the mistaken identity. People yelling stuff at you on the street, mistaking you for someone, trying to fight you because they think you’re someone you’re not, all this stuff qualifies.

The first example is the ‘homeless guy yelling at people’ subgenre. If you live somewhere with lots of homeless people, you’ll probably have plenty of fuel for this one.

The third example is the sort you want to be careful with. “Staff/authority figures here yelled at me” is funny, but it’s a potential DLV (display of lower value). Only use it if you’re already high value enough and you just need to humanize yourself some and get more attainable.

 

Spectated Something

Our third ‘crazy thing’ story type is something you have spectated.

This should be something out-of-the-ordinary and entertaining. The classic old school seduction community example was, “Did you just see that fight outside?” that went on to discuss a midget getting into a fight (I think with a woman? Or was it another midget? I can’t even remember now. Whatever, it was something ridiculous).

Here are just some examples:

• A guy dressed as a mascot (e.g., someone in a chicken suit outside a restaurant) doing something loco, like yelling at people, getting into arguments, dancing really weird, etc. (“Guess I can cross seeing that nonsense off my bucket list now”)

• Someone engaged in some kind of acrobatic, entertainment, or street magic display: walking on a wire, juggling, magic tricks on the street corner, etc. (“That guy was pretty good. He should get off the street corner and get his own show!”)

• Some out-of-place animal doing something unusual: a pigeon pecking at a chicken McNugget, for instance. (“Isn’t that cannibalism?”)

There’s always something weird going on. The only trick to being able to use recent ‘saw something wild’ spectator stories is to keep your eyes open while out and about so you can turn life’s strange hiccoughs into entertaining short stories.

 

4 Cool DHV Story Examples

A display of higher value (DHV) is the seduction community term for anything you do to showcase qualities that mark you as a likable, desirable, competent, capable, connected, high status, or otherwise important or useful man.

A little over a year ago I wrote about how to nest DHVs within your stories. Done this way, you convey value in a credible way few people will quibble with.

The examples I used there were mostly for later in conversation, not early on.

Below, I’ll share four different ways to use ‘cool DHV’ stories early on in conversation.

Here’s the key to credible DHV stories: the DHV you mention should be a detail in the story, while some other element (i.e., an interesting observation or a humorous experience) is the ‘point’ of telling it.

That’ll make more sense in just a moment.

 

Activity DHV

An activity that is cool, shows athleticism, adventurousness, etc., is perfect to DHV with. For instance: skiing, snowboarding, surfing, parasailing, hiking, rock climbing, bungie jumping, parachuting, camping, cross-country drives, marathons, triathlons, racing cars, boating, safaris, etc.

When you tell the story, the point of the story needs to NOT be the activity itself, or it sounds like bragging. For instance, this is thinly veiled boasting: “I just got back from skiing and man, the slopes are beautiful right now.” That is, it is boasting unless it’s actually relevant to the conversation… for instance, if she mentioned she was thinking about hitting the slopes but wasn’t sure what they were like this time of year. Then it’s a direct response, not a boast.

However, if you have an actually intriguing observation to share, AND it’s also recent, then it’ll work. Example:

I just got back from skiing and you know what’s wild? Do you ski? Well, usually this time of year the slopes are empty. But I was up there this weekend and the line for the ski lift was like fifty people long all day. It’s like everyone decided to all hit the slopes at once.

I’ll highlight a few little elements here:

• We ask her if she skis so she’s more involved in the telling and you can calibrate it better to her. If she doesn’t ski and doesn’t express interest in skiing, you keep it short, like this example, then drop the topic unless she asks further. If she says she does and seems interested, you can expand the topic further, though.

• The point you’re observing is the strange behavior of the skiing public this past weekend. Somehow everyone decided to ski – not just you. This is a subtle attainability point as well, since you’re slightly ‘de-specializing’ yourself… you went skiing, which is cool, but so did everyone else, so you’re not THAT special. Just one of the many cool people! (in more ways than one, on that frosty ski slope)

Even if she doesn’t ski, knowing that you do this active outdoor thing that takes some skill and costs some money serves as a DHV (so long as you don’t get hung up on the topic and bore her with it!).

 

Successful Friend DHV

Do you have successful friends?

It doesn’t matter if YOU are successful or not. You don’t usually want to be talking about how much money you make or have. However, talking about having friends who are well-off can be okay.

Example:

So my friend who comes from money – lucky guy! – just bought a boat. Neither of us knew anything about boats before but we tried taking it out last weekend. I think the only reason we survived was because we were able to find some videos on YouTube about how to steer a boat back into port again.

Here we’re actually combining the ‘near-death experience’ story type with the ‘successful friend DHV.’ Anyway, by talking about the successful friend you have, you:

• Communicate that you are connected to high status people. Which implies you are also high status (or else why would such people maintain close relationships with you?).

• Hint that perhaps – just maybe – you yourself are also successful. It does not matter if you are or you aren’t. Either way, her not really knowing is a stronger attractor.

 

Preselection DHV

 

Our third type of ‘cool DHV’ is one that features preselection. Preselection is the effect whereby women who come to know that other (desirable) women find you attractive begin to view you as more attractive than they earlier did. If they liked you a little before, they may start to like you a lot more once you’re preselected. If they didn’t like you at all they may become very curious about you post-preselection.

Showing preselection is usually the stronger tactic than telling a story about it. It won’t always be convenient to show off preselection, though; meanwhile a preselection DHV story is always going to be something available to you to use in any circumstance (including early on).

Example:

About a year ago I dated this girl who did some modeling. However, in her spare time she used to practice wicca. You know, the whole witchcraft thing? I had no idea until I was about two months into dating her; it’s not really my scene. Anyway, supposedly she cast some spell on me that’s supposed to make me age slower, and I don’t know if it’s working, but I’ve been thinking about it lately because suddenly over the last three weeks or so I’ve had about a dozen people tell me I look 10 years younger than I actually am. So now I’m just like, ‘Did it work?’

Where could this story fit? Just as soon as you and this girl you’re talking to discuss your ages, in fact. Several notes about this story example:

• You mention you dated this girl “a year ago.” That way the girl you’re talking to isn’t so worried about competition… but she still is going to worry about it some. Are you still talking to this girl? Why did you break up? The sorts of things women like to find out (i.e., excellent bait)!

• You mention that the girl you dated “did some modeling.” This is a cue to the girl you’re talking to that the girl you were dating was hot. Others include things like “she has this big following on social media”, “she was this ex-prom queen”, “cheerleader”, “stripper”, etc. You don’t need to include cues like this; if you’re a cool guy and she likes you she’s going to tend to assume you date hot women anyway. But if it’s true and fits the story, might as well throw it in!

• You calibrate the outré-ness of wicca by absolving yourself of involvement in it, saying you had no idea this girl was into it until two months in. You don’t know how any given girl you talk to is going to feel about it (and it’ll range from “actually I'm into that too” to “that’s so cool” to “that’s blasphemy” to “that’s just dumb”). By distancing yourself from it, you can tell the story without getting caught up in whatever judgments she has about witchcraft.

• The point of the story ties back into what you were talking about – the whole point was that she put a spell on you to keep you young, and recently everyone has been telling you you look really young. So… did it work?

Another ‘recency’ variation of this story is, “Well recently she [something interesting or funny].” e.g., “A year ago I dated this girl who did some modeling and we actually got really into restaurants, to the point where we had to cut back because she was starting to gain too much weight. Well recently she reached out to me and I guess she fell off the wagon because she just texted me this monster list of great little hole-in-the-wall restaurants she’s found. So that’s where I just came from, one of these awesome little restaurants this ex-girlfriend sent me, and let me tell you, that place was good.”

 

Skill DHV

The Skill DHV story is where you take some skill you have – like a creative skill (writer, painter, musician, singer, sculptor, illustrator, architect, interior designer, website designer; artists of all kinds) or another skill where you build or make things (chef, clothes maker, shoemaker, carpenter, welder, blacksmith, etc.) or even another skill if it fits – and discuss something that stemmed from you having this skill.

Example:

So I’m a painter and I was recently invited to this gallery opening as one of the artists they’d showcase. I’ve done a few of these before and it’s pretty cool. However THIS one I was at this past weekend aside from me was just a pile of modern art ‘canvas covered in yellow paint pretending to be profound’. You’re not a modern art fan, are you? I hope I’m not offending you. Okay good. Well, the weekend wasn’t a total loss, but I learned a good lesson: know what you’re signing yourself up for!

Notes:

• This story is a DHV masquerading as a vent. “I got bait-and-switched this weekend! I thought I was going to a good gallery!” But it’s really talking about how you are a painter and this wasn’t your first art gallery rodeo.

• You check in with her after dumping on modern art to ferret out her stance on modern art. If it turns out she’s a modern art lover, you can calibrate the rest of your story to not rile her up (“All right. Anyway, I’m probably being a little unfair to modern art, but it’s just a very different art style from mine and we shouldn’t have been in the same gallery”).

• You also mention the weekend “wasn’t a total loss”, but don’t say how or why. This is a bait; it also offsets some of the negativity of the opinion you’re sharing by showing that you still got value out of the time you spent. You pulled some advantages out of the jaws of defeat!

 

Wrap Up

That does it for today.

Seven (7) early conversation storytelling topics, with examples (in some cases, multiple examples) for each.

Feel better equipped to start slinging some tales in your chitchats?

Just remember: if you don’t have ANYTHING to talk about, either you aren’t paying enough attention… or you need to get out into the world more.

In my experience, just a few trips around town, to the café, to the gym, to the park, or wherever you’re headed, is enough to provide many rich inspirations for stories. Mix that in with whatever activities you engage in, hobbies and pastimes you hold, and the like, and you can make yourself into a veritable treasure vault of intriguing anecdotes.

Chase