How To Stop Talking Like An NPC

All conversations follow a general structure. And all things that follow a general structure are hackable. We’re about to hack conversations and make them work for us. All of us.

Can you think of the last truly great conversation you had?

Maybe you can’t. Maybe you and your neighbors have been locked into NPC mode for so long that you can’t remember the last actually good conversation you had.

If that’s the case, I’d like you to think back as far as you can. Can you remember someone who has a natural knack for conversation? Have you ever been in a situation like Mark’s, where you stumble upon a taxi driver or some other person who just has it—that one thing that turns conversations from brutally boring to exorbitantly exciting?

These people, these brave few non-NPCs who walk among us, these high-level conversationalists… they do things differently. They were handed the script, too, just like all of us, and they know it well. But they’ve identified its problems, just like I did in Chapter 1. They’ve witnessed how little real conversation gets sparked from the dialogue options offered by the script. They’ve decided to transcend it.

They know the secret that I’m about to tell you,

whether consciously or not.

The fascinating truth is that expert conversationalists often stumble into their expertise through pure trial and error. There’s a reason Mark’s taxi driver was so good at commanding the attention of his passengers. He spends all day, every day talking to strangers. I told you he’s read this book, but maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he’s come by his knowledge honestly.

But we all can’t be taxi drivers.

Most of us are engaged in some of the most boring work imaginable, the kind of work that feels inhumane,

work that was assigned to us, like the script, by our imperial masters. We’re paid pennies for giving up our free will. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Are you ready to hear the secret? Here it is.

It’s called the Drop-In Method. It’s easy. All you have to do is start every conversation with something

Unexpected

Vivid

Intriguing

or some combination of these. Instead of beating around the bush, waiting for a great conversation to fall into your lap, the drop-in method puts you in the driver’s seat. It’s about taking control right from the first word of the conversation. Because

conversation is not something that happens to you.

It’s something you build from the ground up, using words as your building blocks.

I told you in Chapter 1 that we need to choose our words carefully. One poorly chosen word can be the difference between being clocked as an NPC and revealing your soul for what it is: genius, and deeply human. Choosing the right words is your way of showing the world that you are not an NPC, but someone who cannot be defined.

A new human being.

Someone who will change the world—someone who is already changing it.

Let’s observe the following scenario. We’ll zoom in closer on a conversation between Mark and one of his friends.

And that was the whole conversation. You see the problem? Mark didn’t choose any of his words carefully.

They were chosen for him.

They were written into the script, the same script he’s been using his entire life. And his friend had absolutely nowhere to go with it. There was nothing unexpected, vivid, or intriguing for them to latch on to, so the conversation was dead on arrival. Really, neither of them stood a chance from the moment Mark opened with that first, tired old line.

But how did the taxi driver engage Mark’s friends so easily, being that he was a perfect stranger? Let’s look a little more closely.

And the conversation goes on like this for the duration of the taxi ride. Mark sits and stares out the window, his script unable to compute these unexpected, vivid, intriguing words that fill up the taxi like the stars fill the sky. By the time Mark and his friends disembark from the vehicle, they all feel a little lighter, a lot more present, and ready to have the best night of their lives. And they do! And the taxi driver? He drives away, fully aware of the impact he’s had on Mark’s friends, ready to pick up the next passenger and change their lives forever through the art of conversation.

The truth is that all great conversations start exactly the same way: with momentum. And momentum, once established, has a tendency to keep going. That’s science. Objects in motion staying in motion.

But Mark, the object at rest, stays at rest, and his conversations never go anywhere but silence.

The words ring so hollow that they may as well not have been said at all.

What makes the taxi driver’s conversation style so effective is that he dropped in immediately. No fear, no worry that what he says may not land, the spirit of improvisation living and breathing inside him. No script that dictates what he will say next. The words are being written in each moment. He responds mindfully, intentionally to what his conversation partner says. He’s always ready to be surprised, and he’s committed to surprising right back.

This is how to start a conversation: just drop in.

Spare the small talk.

Leave that for the NPCs.

Your role now is to break free from the script and to show others that they can do the same. Did you see how Mark’s friend was able to transcend their own NPC dialogue in response to the taxi driver’s dropping in? This is the altruistic truth behind the inner workings of the drop-in method: it helps your conversation partner shed their own NPC skin and become a real person again—a new human being.

Momentum is like a fire. You can’t just expect it to keep burning on its own. You have to make sure it has a good foundation of logs. The drop-in method is the kindling. It gets the fire started.

What you don’t want is to come on too strong, not know what to do next, and watch as the conversation fizzles out in front of you. In some ways, that fizzling is even more disappointing than never dropping in at all.

In the next chapter, I’ll tell you how to keep momentum going, how to level up a conversation from mildly entertaining to transcendent.

transcend