[Vaughn]

I'm terrible at the ramble. Never could keep the convo going with a stranger chick at a bar. Always end up with the beta "where you from" type questions coming out of my mouth. Any tips for what to ramble about?

[Cr33pin]

You have to born a ramblin man... just try to make a living an do the best you can

[Seth_Rose]

Have you read Day Bang? The concept of the ramble is critical in this model. Imo, and according to Roosh, becoming good at rambling is just like developing any other skill, it takes practice. As you said, you are resorting to asking personal questions early on in the interaction; this is a big no-no.

To get good at rambling (beyond practicing) is to a.) Just keep talking, about whatever! Unless you say something utterly stupid, saying anything to keep the interaction going is better than saying nothing or asking personal questions too early which will kill the interaction. b.) Go into incredible detail about a subject. One thing I've been doing lately is asking girls about their water bottles as an opener. I'm actually pretty picky about water bottles and am super pedantic when talking about it.

[Dusty]

If you have trouble maintaining conversations, I recommend "ramping up" over time using "bite sized chunks." Day game works best for this.

By this I mean, if you are new to approaching, sustaining a 30 minute conversation might seem overwhelming and high-pressure.

So start with very short conversations. Get good at them through practice. Don't even concern yourself with digits at first. Then go out and add new new topics and practice longer conversations. Always push yourself to grow.

It might take some time until you build up, but I know of no magic pills.

Also, make sure you have content to draw from. Get actively engaged in life. Travel, read, see movies, etc. Be able to talk about these things. If you haven't done much, plan on doing things, then talk about your plans (e.g., "Yeah, I plan on going to Italy next summer. I read that in Florence the blah blah...")

[Bacchus]

As you practice your ramble, you're going to run out of stuff to say. It's unavoidable. Instead of asking questions when this happens, you need to talk in statements. It makes for a more interesting conversation. For example, "Where are you from?"= "You don't look/act like you're from around here." If she's at all interested, she's going to ask why (if she doesn't even respond, move on), and you can explain yourself. This is now a new conversation topic.

Another example, "What do you like to do in your free time?"= "I bet you like to read trashy novels/ draw pictures of your cats." Get the idea?

It helps if the statement you make is somehow related to what's been said before. But with girls, logic doesn't really matter, so don't worry too much.

[XXL]

combine THIS with THIS and go ramble forever

[Alpha Hunter Zero]

Lots of good info but XXL pretty much gave you all you need to know. Roosh has also covered this topic on his blog. If you happen to need a visual of rambling just watch a few episodes of Seinfeld (credited by Roosh as well as many other members of the forum). Despite it being a little outdated it's still the best TV program for specifically showing non-stop rambling about various topics.

[gandt]

(09-11-2013 07:28 PM)Vaughn Wrote:  

I'm terrible at the ramble. Never could keep the convo going with a stranger chick at a bar. Always end up with the beta "where you from" type questions coming out of my mouth. Any tips for what to ramble about?

Vaughn, I feel your pain. Starting out is not so easy with this stuff... Maybe this exercise below can get you started and before you know it you will never have an awkward silence again!

Conversation is crucial to every interaction; it’s the boat that carries everything along. In a sense, it propels the interaction forward and without it, you’re dead in the water; everything comes to a standstill.

Connecting with a girl or anyone for that matter, on what they’re saying builds rapport and comfort and the person naturally becomes more attracted to you.

When I first started out I was a shit conversationalist. An example of what some of my interactions would look like would be as follows:

“So what do you do?”
“I’m a student”
“Oh cool, me too. What are you up to today?”
“Oh I’m shopping!”
“Nice, what do you think about the weather?”
“It’s nice, I like it when it’s sunny”
“Cool. So….”
“Listen I have to go, nice meeting you”

On the surface it looks like a basic conversation. But if you look deeper the girl is giving you tons of stuff to work with but you aren’t using it.

The above interaction is an example of ploughing: you don’t care what the girl says because you’re just going to say what you had planned to before NO MATTER WHAT she says. This is because a lot of guys when just starting out (myself included) have one of the two following reactions to the idea of talking to girls:

“I don’t know what to say” AND/OR
“I run out of things to say”

and so they go into the conversation style as described above, memorizing so many derivative questions. The girl will get bored.
There’s nothing different and exciting, she doesn’t feel a sense that you two are connecting. As well, you can only memorize so many things... you need to be able to think on your feet in the moment.

Conversational mapping is a technique used to expand upon what someone has said to improve your skills in extending and carrying conversations. Practicing this on lines that have come up when speaking to anyone, target or not, will help you expand on your communication abilities. Now this isn’t going to describe how exactly to form your communication during an interaction, but it helps expand your thought process in what you can talk about instead of a) stating the obvious, b) not even paying any attention to what’s being said, c) regurgitating derivative lines.

So, how does it work?

Take for example this sentence that might come up:

“I study psychology at Florida State”

Pick apart the keywords of the sentence… Any subjects, proper nouns, verbs… Anything that’s not just at, the, be, etc. So here:

“I study psychology at Florida State”

There are three items here we can expand on. What topics could be brought out from them?


Study
Does she look like a typical student?
What does her fashion sense and style look like?
Does she like being a student or can she not wait to be out of school?
Did she think of doing anything else before entering University?
Have you gotten a sense of her maturity level?
How does she act and communicate?


Psychology
Why did she choose to study this area, what attracted her to it?
What does she plan to do after she’s finished with the degree?
Does she want to pursue further into a medical degree/psychiatry?
Does she have a lot of spare time or does her program keep her busy?


Florida State
What does she love about the school?
Why did she choose to come here?
What is it about the city that excites her?
Did she live here her whole life, or did she move away from home?


Now for each of the three areas, we have four questions. She’ll provide an answer and then from there we can imagine more action words to move forward on, and expand our map.

Practice this technique to improve on your ability to connect and communicate, as well as to not be “stopped dead in the water” during a conversation. You can always keep going. Almost have an imaginary conversation with someone and create possibilities and what you could answer, and then their possible answers. Write it down. In this way, you create “trees” of where the conversation could go and you’ll pretty soon see, there’s no reason to run out of material.

Once you improve in this sense, you can worry about how you form your dialogue. If you are having trouble making a conversation last, don’t worry about HOW you communicate. Subtleties like questions vs. statements, how much talking you should do vs. her, tonality, etc… You can worry about those once you know that you aren’t running out of things to say. If you are connecting deeper on questions that actually relate to the conversation, you may be surprised at what results occur, and how the individual on the other side might reciprocate.

Although most of the above advice applies to two-way conversations it can also be applied to rambling. Through developing my skills in the fashion I described above I can take my own sentences and thoughts and turn them into funny little narratives that go on and on if I need to.

[horn]

Honestly? Practice, practice, practice.

No: Job, Major, Politics, Where you from, religion, sports [unless she's a sports nut].

You are not seeking info. You are making her hamster spin.

Most important: Once she starts talking, SHUT THE FFFK UP. Listen.