Hmm, this is as good a time as any to roll out the concept of
Transitions.
Here is a draft chapter from
Magic Bullets.
As it is a draft chapter, please tear it apart and provide feedback. If this sort of thing amuses you, please contact me. Don't worry about the formatting; that's a copy and paste thing.
I explain
Magic Bullets and some of the influences behind it in this post:
I'm coming out of retirement for a minute to answer all of the Qs in this section Transitions What is a Transition
A Transition bridges the gap between the Opener and the beginning of Attraction. To begin Attraction, you need to have the freedom to discuss a variety of subjects and to express emotion. You need her, and her group if she is with one, to be comfortable talking to you and enjoying the interaction. We call this a
normal conversation. Once you are able to begin a normal conversation, the Transition is over.
Sometimes you will have this freedom immediately after the opener. For example, if you use a Direct Opener such as “I like you. I want to get to know you” and she responds positively, you are in position to have a normal conversation. The next subject you talk about could be virtually anything, and you don’t need a Transition.
If, however, you have asked her for the time, you don’t necessarily have the freedom to move straight from that to talking about personal subjects. It’s possible to get away with this, but without a Transition, it may feel awkward for both of you.
Generally, the lower risk/reward Opener you used, the more work you will have to do in the Transition. In this section we will assume that you used a function, opinion, situational, or “no opener” opener.
Types of Transitions
• Content Transitions
• Observations
•
Cold Reads
• Phrasal Transition
• No Transition
I have arranged these from most to least intense.
Content Transitions
A content transition uses her or her friends’ response to your opener to change the subject to a new conversation. For example, using the “Eddie” situational opener (see p. XX), she might mention that her best friend back home in London was in that same situation.
If you’re quick, you might see an immediate Transition opportunity and interrupt her by confirming that she’s from London. When she tells you that she is, you can roll out a London-related anecdote. It doesn’t even have to be long, but it has to be interesting enough that she pursues that conversation instead of the one about Eddie, because then you’d be back in the Opener.
This dialogue may help explain.
Me: My friend Eddie over there in the green shirt just broke up with his girlfriend. How long do you think he has to wait before asking her friend out?
Her: Umm, I don’t know. My best friend Jane back home in London was in that situation, with two guys, she’d been dating one …
Me: [interrupting]: You’re from London? Oh my God I just got back from there. I had the greatest time.
Her: What were you doing in London?
…and away we go into Attraction
Was that too easy? Alright, let’s pretend that she doesn’t ask what I was doing in London, but returns back to the subject of Eddie. In that case, it usually (but not always) implies that she is engaging in my opinion opener out of a sense of social obligation and isn’t especially interested in me, so I will definitely have work to do before making her commit to an AIA answer. It could also mean that she is a linear thinker (rarer among women than men) or that she has something she’s dying to tell me about Jane.
Let’s pick the conversation up from where I interrupted her.
Me: [interrupting]: You’re from London? Oh my God I just got back from there. I had the greatest time.
Her: Yeah, so Jane ended up deciding that she couldn’t even be friends with either of them and…
Me: [interrupting]: I totally want to get your opinion on this, but now I’m curious about this. Is it normal in London that so many people don’t speak English? My friend was opening a restaurant in Mayfair. For desert I got carrot soup instead of the carrot cake I ordered. I didn’t want to say anything, but I would figured everyone speaks English?
Her: No, not at all. Anyone in the EU can live in London now.
Me: Oh yeah? Well, I loved London. We went on this helicopter ride over the city, and…
…away we go into Attraction
By the way, you don’t have to interrupt to make a content transition work. But you shouldn’t reach back into the conv ersation to find your content transition. For example, assume that I we can continued talking about Jane and Eddie fo a while, I couldn’t very well use London as a hook for my Transition. That could feel forced, and if it looked like I was grasping at ways to keep the conversation going, it could bring her to the AIA question before you’re ready.
What is required to make a Content Transition work?
• She must give you material to work with in her response to your Opener
• You must have material that can be related to her material, or you must be able to improvise some.
• You must come across as genuinely surprised and delighted by the new topic and use that enthusiasm to carry the rest of the group to it with you.
If you are comfortable with Content Transitions, you can start to vary your Openers to encourage specific conversational subjects to arise from peoples’ responses: specific conversational subjects that lead naturally, but not too obviously, into stories you want to tell.
Observations
An Observation Transition is where you notice something about her or the group (or, more rarely, someone else in the group). This observation should still be more or less neutral, although it gives an opportunity for a neg or teasing, if appropriate.
For an Observational Transition to work, you must sell them on the idea that you really noticed something about them and that this wasn’t planned all along. Delivery is key here.
Best Friends Test
If the group I am speaking is made up of two women and no men, then my transition will almost always be The Best Friends Test. Credit Style on this one. I don’t really deliver it the same way as he does, but my version is not necessarily any better or worse; its just one I evolved to (probably because I couldn’t remember Style’s wording so I just tried to follow the idea in my own words).
My version has three elements. The beginning and the end are always the same. The middle will vary depending on the circumstances.
Me: Opener
Them: Opener response
Me: You know what? (pause) You guys make the exact same (slight pause) facial expressions.
Them: (Laughter) – if they’re not laughing, you’re not delivering the previous line correctly
Me: Here, I’m going to give you guys the best friends test that my cousin Sara taught me,
At this point, I use my social intuition and experience from their immediate reaction, from their behavior during the entire conversation and from just looking at them generally to assess how “in” I am: how much they are curious about me . willing to talk to me / willing to be in my frame, etc.
If I am “in’, then I will ask them “Do you guys want to do the best friends test?” because I know the answer will be yes. This gives me the opportunity to move, not too far, but a few feet away to lock in, and they will follow me. I will also move them, while telling them what I’m doing, so they are standing more or less side-by-side. You’ll see in Attraction why I do this.
If I am not at all “in” I might even finish that sentence “that my cousin Sara taught me” with another false time constraint like “and then I really have to get back to my friends”. False time constraints are good, but one is best, two is okay, three is a lot, and any more is silly. I still need them to stand more or less side by side, but I might tell them to put themselves in that position instead of touching them.
Anywhere in between is a mixed bag. I might false time constraint while locking in and moving them physically, or I might just skip locking in but still move them physically. Once you do the best friends test a few times you will:
• Get an intuition of when you can raise the intensity of the interaction (touching them, guiding them, locking in) and to what extent
• Have developed your own variation on this script anyway
Once that’s done, we go to the conclusion:
Here I will ask them: Do you guys (slight pause) use the same shampoo? They will almost always look at each other, or one will look at the other. Before they can really start talking – and they will – I move my arm so that my hand is between them, momentarily blocking eye contact between them. This gets their attention back on me. I will interrupt whatever they are saying and to finish the routine with:
You guys looked at each other before even answering the question.
Wait just a second. They may turn their heads to look at each other again. They’ll usually be giggling uncontrollably by this point. So I notice this with: You just did it again.
I might let this go one or two more times, with a somewhat bemused expression but an eyebrow raised, just saying “and again” each time they do this.
Once they’ve stopped giggling, or I get bored, I close the routine with:
See, people who share a strong emotional connection will turn to look at each other when asked a question about shared experiences, even over something as mundane as shampoo.
That’s all I do. Nothing more on this topic will help me, but I’m in Attraction at this point and free to have a normal conversation.
Contingencies with the best friends test
Sometimes the best friends test doesn’t go as planned. Only one girl looks at the other. Or, worse, they both stare straight ahead as they answer the question.
If only one girl looks at the other, I will point that out and tell them that the one being looked at is the dominant one in this friendship. This often isn’t true, so I will skip pretty quickly to the good one / bad one Cold Read Transition below.
If neither look at each other, I explain that that’s rare, and deliver the concluding line of the routine. Usually by then they look at each other, and then I’ll catch them on it, and tease them with something “I knew you had it in you” or “I knew you guys liked each other deep down” or something similar.
Cold Reads
Phrasal Transition
A phrasal Transition is really “No Transition” with crutches. The crutch is you say something to connect your opener to your piece of Attraction material like:
• That reminds me of…
• That’s just like when…
• Yeah, that’s crazy, because
You can use these even if there is no connection between what the Opener and your first piece of Attraction material.
No Transition
Using No Transition means simply starting to talk about an unrelated topic. This may feel strange or awkward. In truth, most people -- especially women -- don't care if there is little obvious relationship between different conversational topics, as long as they are entertained. Think about a stand-up comedian like
Sinn. His jokes will be grouped into certain subjects, but these subjects are rarely related. So after a couple of jokes about, say, airlines, he or she will tell a couple about some movie star. They're not connected, but we don't notice or care. We're entertained and interested.
That being said, it does sometimes feel awkward to her, and the fact that it may feel awkward to you will affect your non-verbal communication. Once you get really good, you can go with No Transition, but if you’re not at that level yet, why bother? You don’t get any points for skipping the Transition.
If you’re not regularly dating beautiful women, remove the element of chance from your game. Only use No Transition when you sense you have so captivated them during your Opener that you don’t need a Transition to be able to move into a normal conversation with her. In that case, just start on whatever piece of Attraction material you feel like using.
- 
Linear Mode
