Rules of the Game

by Neil Strauss

  Elsewhere in his book, King provides countless other tools for improving your mental and emotional states. By using your mind to improve your life, you can build the confidence that is an absolutely vital component to being successful with women.

  As King suggests, “Look for the good in everything and, if you can’t find any, figure out a way to put some in.”

  MISSION 1: Share Your Traits

  Write down eight qualities you want someone to know about you. These might include individuality, humor, trustworthiness, intelligence, artistic talent, or whatever else makes you stand out.

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  MISSION 2: Find Your Stories

  Now you know what you want to convey. But how do you convey it?

  Welcome to storytelling day.

  Though most women tell guys that learning to listen is important, in the early stages of an interaction, learning to speak is more important. This is because it’s your job to demonstrate you’re worth spending the night talking to.

  Your vehicle for doing this is your past. Rather than telling women your best qualities and most charming foibles, stories allow you to show them. They also prevent you from blitzing a woman you’ve just met with generic questions about where she’s from and what she does for work. And they provide the opportunity not just to fascinate a group of people but to inspire them to share their own stories in return.

  Your tasks today will lead you toward the generation and performance of the perfect story.

  You may be lucky enough to be a great storyteller already—able to hold court at countless dinner parties with the tale of that one time you had to break into a drugstore in Cairo at three in the morning to get aspirin for your girlfriend.

  Or perhaps you’re less loquacious, unable to think of stories on the spot or to hold anyone’s attention long enough to share them. I’ve heard hundreds of men claim that their lives aren’t interesting and they have no stories to tell. This is just another limiting belief rearing its head. It doesn’t matter how small a town you live in, how little you may have traveled, how normal your family is, or how old you are, you do have interesting stories to tell. You just have to find them.

  So think of the memorable moments in your life, whether they’re pivotal experiences that shaped who you are as a person or just funny, trivial anecdotes that you enjoy sharing. They might be:

  ironic and embarrassing, like the time you went to relationship counseling with your girlfriend, and the therapist asked her out afterward;

  adventurous and exciting, like the time you were scuba diving, your regulator broke, and a school of barracudas swarmed around you;

  sexy and awkward, like the time the married woman sitting next to you on the plane tried to have sex with you in the lavatory;

  naive and touching, like the time your hamster died and you thought it was sleeping—for seven days;

  small and poetic, like the time you were eating a burger and suddenly realized the meaning of life;

  dangerous and heroic, like the time you saved a girl from some guy who was threatening to beat her up outside a club in Rio;

  current and confusing, about something that happened only minutes ago, like a girl you don’t know coming up and asking if you’ll take her sister home;

  anything you want them to be—as long as they don’t evoke negative emotions in listeners or hint at negative qualities about yourself such as misanthropy, stinginess, unhappiness, prejudice, anger, or perversion.

  Now think back over your childhood, family life, school, work, travel, recreation, and dating experiences, from your earliest memory to what you did last night. Extract from those experiences eight personal stories. Then give them intriguing names (like “The Magical Hamburger Incident” or “The Festering Hamster Story”) and write them down in the space below:

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  If you’re having trouble coming up with eight stories, think back on recent conversations you’ve had with friends and family. Try to recall any anecdotes you told that elicited excitement, intrigue, or laughter.

  If you’re still having trouble, imagine that you have a chance to pitch a movie about yourself to film producers. What key stories from your life would you need to include to interest them?

  If you’re still stuck, call a parent, sibling, or friend, and ask them to share a few favorite memories about you.

  MISSION 3: Select Your Stories

  Your next task is to scan the qualities you listed in Mission 1. Then look over the stories you chose for Mission 2. Mark with an asterisk each story that displays one or more of your eight qualities. Note that an ideal story does not brag or overcompensate but displays both your strengths and your vulnerabilities in an honest, humble, humorous, and engaging manner.

  Of the stories you’ve marked, choose the two that you find most compelling and entertaining. (If you haven’t marked any stories with asterisks, it’s time to think of more stories—or more qualities.) List your two top stories here:

  1.

  2.

  These are the core stories you’ll work on today.

  MISSION 4: Prepare Your Stories

  Grab a piece of paper, pull out your journal, or open a new file on your computer.

  Write out each of the two stories in their entirety. Anything goes—as long as you don’t fib, because it could come back to haunt you. Here are a few tips:

  Have a strong beginning. Your story needs to make a good first impression, and the best way to ensure that is to have a short, sharp, clear initial sentence. This can be a summary that flows naturally out of the conversation: “Oh, yeah, that’s like the time I was forced to eat rancid shark in Iceland.” It can take the form of a question that grabs the listener’s interest: “Have you ever eaten rancid shark?” Or it can just be an intriguing hook: “The weirdest thing happened to me while I was in Iceland.”

  Have a good ending. If the story takes a surprising twist at the end, reveals the answer to a mystery posed earlier, has a non-cheesy punch line, or wraps everything up into a neat lesson, this is ideal. Either way, make sure your last sentence leaves the listener with laughter, excitement, shock, admiration, disbelief, or any strong, positive emotion. You may also want to add a question at the end, to elicit responses or similar stories from your listeners.

  Add intrigue. Suspense occurs when a listener knows something is going to happen next but doesn’t know either what it is or how it’s going to happen. So make sure your audience is aware at all points where you’re going with the story—or at least that you’re going somewhere—but not how you’re going to get there.

  Include vivid detail. Play back the experience in your mind as you write. Close your eyes if you have to. Remember sights, sounds, smells, and feelings. The richer the detail, the more involved the listeners will become.

  Add humor. Watch good stand-up comedians and you’ll notice that between a set-up and a punch line, they squeeze in several additional jokes—plus a tagline after the punch line for an extra laugh. Find waypoints where you can add humor to your story. Useful devices include making fun of yourself, others, or human behavior; comical exaggeration; references back to previous jokes; and saying the opposite of what people expect.

  Add value. When illustrating your positive traits, there’s a right way to brag and a wrong way. The wrong way is to declare it in a sentence: “I just bought a new car.” The right way is to share it as a casual detail that helps paint a picture: “So I was driving home, and I had to unroll the window because the new car smell was suffocating me.”

  Cut the fat. When you’re finished, reread your story. Make sure it’s easy to follow and doesn’t include unnecessary details and information. Mercilessly remove anything that doesn’t contribute
to the story. You may need to tell the story to a few people and make sure the pacing works.

  Cut the neediness. Make sure that the intent of the story is to entertain, amuse, or involve other people, not to sell yourself or your accomplishments. One way to prune validation seeking is to look at every instance of the words I or me, and see how many you can remove without detracting from the story.

  Check the final length. Your story should last no less than thirty seconds and no more than two minutes (that’s roughly seventy-five to three hundred words on paper). If it’s shorter, add more intrigue and humor. If it’s longer, cut more fat.

  Once you have both stories clearly written out, distill them to their major plot elements and make bullet points for each one. If, for example, you were describing Star Wars, the bullet points would be: Teenager living with aunt and uncle; buys two droids; discovers secret message; and so on. Unlike Star Wars, your stories should have only three to six bullet points.

  Though you’re going to practice reciting your entire story, all you need to memorize are the bullet points. This way, your delivery will seem less scripted, and you’ll have more flexibility to expand and collapse the story, depending on your audience’s interest level.

  MISSION 5: Tell Your Stories

  I have this theory about words. There’s a thousand ways to say

  “Pass the salt.” It could mean “Can I have some salt?”

  Or it could mean “I love you.” It could mean

  “I’m very annoyed with you.” Really, the list could go on and on.

  Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.

  —CHRISTOPHER WALKEN

  It’s time to master the telling of your story.

  The best way to captivate a listener is to be passionate. Be excited about your life, intense about your experiences, and believe in every word you say. Each time you repeat the story, it should seem like you’re telling it for the first time—with all the confusion or excitement or wonder you felt when first experiencing it.

  Review the vocal exercises from Day 3, then recite your two stories into your audio recorder. Make sure you speak loudly, slowly, clearly, and dynamically. To further hook listeners, stress key words and insert pauses to build suspense or humor. Experiment with emphasizing different words and pausing in unexpected places to change the rhythm of the story.

  Once you’re comfortable with your recitation, find a place in the middle of each story to insert an opportunity for listeners to interact. This will help keep their attention. Most interaction points will involve asking listeners if they relate to an experience, have an opinion on the experience, or can jog your memory with a fact.

  For example, if you’re telling a story that takes place at a Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza parlor, your interaction point can simply be: “Have you ever been there? Okay, so you know what I’m talking about.” If it takes place in an airport, you can ask: “It was kind of like that movie where Tom Hanks plays the guy stuck in an airport. What was it called?”

  If you want to take your performance to the next level, practice casually pausing at the climax of the story to build suspense. You can take a sip of your drink, put a mint in your mouth, or, if you smoke, light a cigarette.

  After you’ve made a successful recording of your stories, go back to the piece of paper or computer file where you originally wrote them and update them. Add any interaction points, pauses, or other embellishments you came up with while working on your delivery.

  MISSION 6: Perform Your Stories

  You’ve reached the final step in preparing your stories.

  Stand in front of a mirror or set up a video camera to film yourself.

  Watch yourself recite the story.

  The key to a good performance is being expressive. Facial animation, eye movements, hand gestures, body language, and energy level can all tell a story as powerfully as the words themselves.

  Experiment with accentuating different thoughts and emotions in the story with specific movements. Try changing your gestures or tone of voice when you’re quoting other people. And feel free to use any props within arm’s reach—a cell phone, a straw, or another person.

  However, be careful not to overdo it. The smaller and more subtle your gestures and affectations are, the more credible they’ll be. Don’t get overly hyper or spastic, and make sure you have the attention and interest of the group at all times, allowing them to contribute when they want to. Don’t blitz them with unrelated stories back to back; that could push you over the line from conversational expert to conversational terrorist.

  There’s one final element of the performance that you can’t practice in front of a mirror: the unpredictable. As anyone who’s been onstage will tell you, no matter how much preparation you’ve done, everything changes once the spotlight is shining on you.

  So when you’re talking to a group, don’t worry about getting every gesture and phrase right. Just make sure you hit the bullet points. And if people ask questions, interrupt you, or suddenly start telling their own related story, don’t get flustered. This is a good thing: It means they’re paying attention.

  If the conversation veers off course, don’t insist on finishing your story unless your listeners ask what happened next. You can always keep the conclusion on tap for later in the evening to fill in an awkward conversational lull. Don’t forget that the purpose of the story is not to get to the end, but to further display your magnetic personality.

  On the other hand, don’t tolerate rude behavior. Comedians deal with hecklers all the time. Have a few lines on tap for troubleshooting. A friend of mine, for example, jokes, “The show’s over here,” whenever someone gets distracted.

  MISSION 7: Share Your Stories

  Use your two stories—with interaction points—at least twice in conversation today. You don’t have to tell the same person both stories; just make sure you use each story at least twice over the course of the day.

  It doesn’t matter whether you tell them to a woman you’re interested in, a coworker, a friend, a parent, a stranger, a sibling, or a telemarketer, as long as you tell them.

  Feel free to improvise. As you tell the stories, you may insert new details, jokes, and interaction points in the moment. After each successful recitation, return to your master story file and note anything you want to add, change, or remove to improve the telling.

  If either of the stories doesn’t hold your listeners’ attention, replace it with another story from your list. If the new one doesn’t work either, ask someone who was there at the time to give you feedback on your delivery or tell you his or her version of the events. If both stories get great reactions, start crafting new ones.

  And congratulate yourself. Storytelling is one of civilization’s oldest arts, and you’re now officially part of that tradition.

  MISSION 1: Get a Date Book

  Turn to your Day 13 Briefing. Tear out the calendar page or make a photocopy. If you don’t want to remove the page and don’t have access to a photocopier, there’s a copy available for you to print at www.stylelife.com/challenge.

  MISSION 2: Promote Literacy

  Head to a bookstore, preferably one with a café or sitting area. Bring the Stylelife calendar page, something to write with, and your journal, if you’ve been keeping one.

  Get comfortable. You’re going to perform the rest of today’s tasks at the bookstore.

  MISSION 3: Borrow Some Culture

  Pick up a copy of a local events guide. This can be a free weekly newspaper, a magazine-style going-out guide, or a daily paper. You may also want to grab a local Zagat guide to restaurants or nightlife, or even a travel guidebook that includes local attractions. Since you won’t be leaving the bookstore with these, you don’t need to pay for them.

  MISSION 4: Become Cosmopolitan

  Pick up the current issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

  MISSION 5: Plan Your Nights

  Sit somewhere comfortable in the store, like the caf
é. Whip out your Stylelife calendar, and look through the listings, reviews, and recommendations in the paper or reference material you picked up.

  Select an interesting event, restaurant, concert, gallery opening, reading, flea market, or other activity for each day of the week. Write the information for each event in the left-hand column of the calendar. The simpler and cheaper the activity, the better. Free is good too. Make sure it’s something you are able to attend—not a concert that’s sold out or a restaurant that’s out of your price range.

  In the larger column on the right side of the calendar, write one or two compelling sentences convincing someone why he or she should go to each event.

  MISSION 6: Is That What They Really Think?

  Read the issue of Cosmopolitan front to back.

  First, note that women are just as desperate as men to get a date, keep a mate, and avoid rejection. Next, find an interesting topic of conversation inspired by an article, column, letter, or advertisement.

  Once you choose a topic, comment on it to a woman seated nearby or wandering past. (If she’s walking, speak to her while she’s still coming toward you—if you see her back, you’re generally too late.) Show her the story in the magazine, and tell her your reaction to it or ask a question about female behavior based on it.

  If she responds favorably, then congratulate yourself. You’ve just generated your own spontaneous routine. If she doesn’t, keep reading and find another interesting topic. Repeat with a different woman.

  If she happens to ask why you have a copy of Cosmopolitan, tell her the truth: Someone recommended reading it to learn more about women.