"Knowing How to Talk" Is a Skill: How to Open, Catch and Steer a Conversation Gracefully | 100 Big Questions About Life

It's the Lunar New Year — just in case you need this.

Why do we make small talk?

When two people who know each other stand together in an elevator, in a doorway, or across a table and say nothing, the silence turns awkward. "It's so cold today." "That's some rain." "New Year's almost here." Sentences like these restate the obvious and carry almost no information. They are the human equivalent of bonobos grooming one another — a way of keeping a weak bond alive. That's simply how it works: we lean on language so heavily that we forget language is only a tool for passing information along. We rack our brains for something to talk about and forget why we are talking at all.

Conversation usually serves one of two purposes. The first is efficiency: language exchanges information so that something gets done as fast as possible. Meetings, job interviews, sales pitches all work this way. Once both sides know what they want, the only question left is how to finish in the least time. Short, direct, unambiguous, nothing redundant — that is a good conversation of this kind.

The second purpose is building a relationship: language is there to stir some feeling in the other person. Dates, chitchat, dinners with friends are mostly this. People ramble about nothing in particular so they can "write their own information into the other person's database, and the other person's into their own," and thereby form a connection. At bottom it is not far from the way some animals leave their scent on each other.

When two people are operating in different modes, the conversation dies easily and both walk away unhappy. You go home for New Year's; an elder fusses over you and wants to catch up on everything under the sun, while you want the "pleasantries" task finished, so you answer from behind a shield: "mm," "right," "yeah." Or your girlfriend gets chewed out by her boss and comes to you for comfort, and you tell her, "You got scolded because your time management is bad. Improve your self-discipline and it won't happen again. Start with a to-do list." Or an entrepreneur meets an investor: the investor wants every key point inside ten minutes, and the entrepreneur, straining to build warmth first, turns the meeting into a social performance.

Whichever mode you are in, the fact that a conversation is happening at all means both sides want some kind of feedback from the other. Steering the other person into giving you the feedback you want — that is what "knowing how to talk" means.

People generally bring three expectations to a conversation: making sure the other person received your message and will act on it; making sure the other person doesn't dislike you; and making sure the other person can't refuse you. The first shows up mostly at work and in commands — "get the draft to me by 6 pm today," "stop playing games, come eat." (We will leave this efficiency-driven talk aside.)

The second is ordinary small talk — "what topic will keep this from being awkward," "what do I open with when I talk to a girl I like." The goal is a friendly atmosphere and the feeling, on the other side, that talking to you is comfortable.

The third resembles the French art of seduction in conversation. It does more than make the other person comfortable; it builds an artificial anticipation in them, a sense of wanting more. We'll call this playful, flirtatious conversation.

People living among other people need feedback to confirm that they are worth something. To make someone comfortable talking to you, make them feel valued — which is what we wrote about before: let the conversation show that you are aware the other person exists.

Take apologies and thanks. Add the other person's name after "thank you" or "sorry" and the phrase stops being a ritual and becomes recognition of that particular person. "Thanks" doesn't carry the warmth of "Thanks, mom," "Thanks, dad," "Thanks, Fat Tiger." Add the reason and how you feel, and the thanks or the apology becomes concrete, which underlines "you" as a specific person even more. The animation director Satoshi Kon wrote in his farewell letter that, gravely ill, he wanted to see his parents one more time and tell them to their faces: thank you for giving birth to me. His parents rushed over from Sapporo the next day, and when his mother saw her son in the hospital bed she blurted out, "I'm sorry I didn't give birth to you as a healthy child." Thanks and apology offered that far down at the root are about as far as valuing another person can go.

And when what someone says goes unanswered, they feel their existence has been denied. Wanting an instant reply, a long reply, a message sent to me alone and not to a group — all of it is the wish that one's presence be answered, confirmed, valued.

All of which assumes the other person wants your feedback. Relationships move forward in balance, and rushing ahead alone breaks the balance. Shower a woman with expensive gifts right after meeting her, or confess your feelings before you really know each other, and she feels you are demanding something valuable in return. That is pressure. A healthy long-term relationship survives on equal footing, and playful conversation keeps adding weight to both pans of the scale — like sex held permanently in foreplay, where both people understand that the conversation ends the moment it climaxes, and so keep it in a satisfying, unresolved state, forever "to be continued."

On how to keep a conversation going indefinitely, we've put together some suggestions that may help.

1. How to set the tone | Make the goal a relationship, not a transaction

If you are debating a public question, then "objectivity as the standard, cause and effect, reasoning toward a conclusion" matters a great deal, and a fierce argument does not rule out a deep friendship. But that reasoning style needs both people to have a real knowledge base and a real appetite for the exchange. If one side lacks the background, it turns into a lecture.

The safer move is to pull the tone back from "find the truth / win the argument" toward "pay attention to how the other person feels." You don't have to. But it does keep things friendly.

Specifically:

Skip the abstract, go for detail. The more concrete and vivid, the more the other person is drawn in. Steer "Japanese people are all so polite" toward "last year my friend and I were traveling in Osaka, and there was this old woman at a 7-Eleven…"

Skip the future, go for the past. Remembering carries clearer feeling than imagining. Steer "in 100 years humans definitely won't have marriage anymore" toward "when you were a kid, did you ever picture which celebrity you'd marry?"

Skip judgments, talk about feelings. Your judgment may collide with theirs; your feelings give them something to work with. Steer "mapo tofu is the king of Sichuan cooking" toward "of all Sichuan dishes, mapo tofu is my favorite."

Skip guessing motives, state facts. Most people hate being judged, and anything that evaluates the other person carries risk. Steer "you just don't love me anymore" toward "you've come home late three nights running, and it makes me feel neglected."

Skip defensive negatives, use open affirmatives. Talking is not about beating the other person. Agree first, then bring in your own separate thought. Steer "that's not really right" toward "right, right — and I also heard…"

Skip the objective standard, use my standard or yours. Big data means nothing to one person, and neither does a general human standard. Steer "you're over 30 and you still watch a kids' cartoon like My Hero Academia?" toward "who's your favorite character?"

2. How to open a topic with a question

No response, no conversation, and the commonest way to get a response is to open with a question. The principle is to let the other person answer without effort. "Do you think wave-particle duality and string theory hold up?" "What's your take on New Year's losing its old flavor?" "What do you want to eat?" "You there?" All of these hand the other person a burden.

Specifically:

Avoid questions that require specialized knowledge; ask about something connected to them. "How many people in China still eat dumplings for New Year's these days?" is a strain; "Do you eat dumplings for New Year's?" is relaxing.

Avoid questions that require taking a stance; ask about facts. "Do you like dumplings?" is harder than "Do you eat dumplings often?"

Avoid open-ended questions; hand them a set of options. "Who's your favorite Chinese actor?" is harder than "Do you like Huang Bo or Eddie Peng more?"

Avoid questions that require summarizing or reasoning; ask what actually happens. "Does your family still have New Year's spirit?" is harder than "Does your family still set off firecrackers and put up spring couplets?"

In short: the more specific, concrete and personal the question, the less effort it costs to answer.

When you don't know each other well, both sides may still be on guard, and the conversation slides easily into pure information-gathering, where every disclosure feels like exposure. So when you ask a question, offer something about yourself too — trade your information for theirs, and their unease about exposure eases. Once their guard is down, though, most people would rather talk about themselves; that is the moment to become a listener, draw them out, and hold back on your own material.

3. How to get the other person to keep talking

When someone clearly wants to talk, give them positive emotional feedback to keep them going: "Really?" "No way." "I had no idea."

Repeating their key words works too. If they say, "At our team's year-end party I won the Akalong raffle — three days in Seoul," you can answer "Party?" and they'll fill in the details ("Yeah, last week"), or "Akalong?" or "Three days in Seoul?"

For people less inclined to volunteer things, try questions. Get them to fill in detail: when, where, who, what happened, why, how it felt, what came next. "When was this?" "Was this on your elementary school playground?" "Really — did it hurt a lot?"

If you have had a comparable experience, bring it up at the right moment. Or offer your reactions as you go. The principle is to answer whatever they say with something positive.

4. How to answer a question about yourself

"What's your sign?" "Sagittarius."

"What did you think of the Neapolitan Quartet?" "It was all right."

A flat, conclusive answer about yourself makes the conversation stiff and hard to continue. Add some feeling to whatever answer you give. The principle is still to let the other person feel you value them.

Take "Do you like cantaloupe?" "Yes" or "no" is a social answer, the polite minimum. "Yes — I buy one every summer" or "Love it. In my book it's the boss of all fruit" is an answer that gives something back.

But don't overshoot and talk too much about yourself, mistaking sincerity for holding nothing back. Reciting every detail of your own life reads as self-absorbed and disrespectful. For example: "Yeah, I buy it every year, though I haven't had any in a while. Fruit's one of those things you only eat when you're a kid and your mom has it cut and waiting. Now I buy it, stick it in the fridge, forget about it, and it goes bad every time."

Also, if you judge that the question was asked to keep things lively, throw it back after answering: "What about you?" If you can't tell, answer and wait to see what they say.

When both of you want to keep talking and you're asked about something you know little about, the other person usually knows the subject well. That's a good moment for a "dumb question" that lets them expand. Asked "Do you watch F1?" with no real idea what F1 is, you can answer, "Is that the one where the cars go over 200 kilometers an hour?" — and off they go on F1 speeds.

5. How to move the conversation to a topic you want

To keep a conversation alive, you can't stay parked in territory you don't know. The way to keep it balanced is to steer their topic toward yours. The principle: don't let them feel ignored or dismissed. Listen closely first, let them see you're listening, then adjust the direction bit by bit from what they've said.

The method: inside the topic they're on, ask a small related question that also interests you. Say they're talking about basketball, which you don't follow — you can steer toward food, which you do care about: "So do stars like Kobe eat completely differently from the rest of us?" And in case they don't know either, add: "Do you change what you eat during basketball season? Bananas and chicken breast by the ton, like people at the gym?"

Another method: agree first, then use a connecting phrase to swing the topic. (In conversation, almost nobody notices or minds if your connectors are used loosely.) "Right, right, right, and also / besides / what's even better is / oh, by the way…"

Or use something outside the conversation to make a small mess — knock over a cup, drop a pen, bump into someone walking past and say sorry. Once the flow breaks, you can open a new topic naturally. You can also move your body, taking them into another space and introducing that space as you go — lead them to the window and say, "Huh, that utility pole over there. I had no idea first-tier cities still had utility poles. Do you still see them where you live?"

But if they still don't take the hint and go on talking to themselves, then unless you genuinely care about what they're going on about, it's time to end the conversation and find someone else to talk to.

6. How to keep a relationship balanced inside a conversation

Close friends are usually good at not putting pressure on each other. When one asks the other for a favor, "How much do you need? Sending it now" leaves the other person feeling the weight of being helped. "Dumbass, how much do you need, sending it now, you idiot" lifts that weight — I insulted you, so you don't have to be so grateful — and the relationship stays balanced.

Too cold, unmoved by anything the other person says, or too warm, putting them on a pedestal as a goddess or a god: neither keeps a conversation alive for long. One approach is rude words wrapped around a core of respect. "You little punk, what are you doing wandering around in a downpour like this, get in here and dry off." "Idiot, where are you, don't tell me you're lost. Stay put, I'm coming to get you."

In a conversation, don't put yourself in the position of needing something from the other person, and try not to leave them feeling they owe you. If you want to pursue a woman, giving yourself the explicit role of "suitor" is a poor choice. Once your aim is clear, the whole atmosphere points at one thing — will she accept you or turn you down — and everything hangs on when she decides. The conversation has become efficiency-driven.

7. What playful conversation is, and how to keep it forever "to be continued"

People often treat knowing dining etiquette as a mark of taste. Etiquette and other rituals get tied to romance because ritual makes you feel that this moment differs from other moments. Because you did something distinctive, something special, that stretch of time becomes more special and more important. This is why, when a couple has a private signal only the two of them understand, the signal sets this exchange apart from every other one.

Playful conversation uses language to build, again and again, an experience set apart from ordinary days. It has no clear aim and is not fixed on a conclusion, so neither side rushes to say everything, and there is time for the conversation to unfold — because here every line is an end in itself, and so every line carries its own weight. In this kind of talk, language is not only a vehicle for information; like wine, perfume or a game of go, it becomes a prop for displaying taste and skill. Unlike the German manner, all facts and earnestness, playful talk usually carries French ambiguity, Japanese reticence, the Chinese meaning beyond the words — much as a horror film stops being frightening the second the monster is fully shown, a mystery loses most of its pleasure once you know who did it, and an erotic film that shows too much turns into visual violence. Robert McKee argues in Story that the more specific a character's motivation, the thinner the character: leave some mystery, and let the audience fill in the depth from their own lives. Elaine Sciolino makes a similar point in La Seduction — in France, the thrill comes not from satisfaction but from desire.

The best models are not romance novels but advertisers and politicians. A good ad works hard to build an alluring image of a brand for you; a good politician is usually a master of ambiguous language. The principle: while making the other person aware that you know they exist, and letting them know that you know, show as much of what makes you distinctive as you can, and keep a proper distance.

In practice:

Dress your sentences with technique and rhetoric. Build humor around what the other person finds funny, use metaphor to summon a particular feeling, use puns to show a second layer of language, hand them a role and pull them into your language game. Dressed this way, your real intent hides behind the rhetoric, grows less obvious, turns ambiguous, and produces a fine sense of distance. Say "the night is so beautiful tonight" and you can mean it as a confession — and the other person can decline to hear it that way and say you were only praising the night.

But all of it has to look effortless, because the instant it feels deliberate, the motive becomes obvious and singular: impure.

Playful conversation also needs both sides inside the game. If Obama makes a punning political joke and you neither get it nor care for wordplay, the conversation doesn't happen. It needs both people to keep raising the stakes while holding the relationship in balance — in other words, to riff. "Great to meet you." "How great?" "As great as breaking into a little jog to go greet someone." Both sides took the same bit and ran with it.

8. How to talk gracefully with elders and relatives over New Year

It's New Year. Your relatives and elders aren't villains; there's no need to make monsters of them. What they ask about is work, salary, dating, marriage, kids, house, car. The least troublesome approach is to meet these topics head-on, answer straight, then move the conversation somewhere more interesting. With elders and relatives you need no playful conversation, no wordplay, no implication. Be patient, take their pleasures as your pleasures, and use the suggestions above to open things up. What you usually come away with: "the tenth day of the first lunar month is the Stone's birthday — when your dad was little he'd sing happy birthday to the rocks," or "beef has to be cut this way or it won't have any chew."

In practice:

With elders, steer toward their own lives. If you don't know where to start, start from the contrast between now and then. "Grandpa, how did the family do New Year's when you were twenty?" "Mom, did you go to temple fairs at New Year's when you were little?" With relatives your own age, don't volunteer topics that invite comparison — think of what goes on a résumé or a matchmaking flyer, and stay off it. If you don't know where to start, start with food, movies, games, or childhood. "Crazy Alien and The New King of Comedy look decent in this year's New Year lineup — are you planning to see anything?" "You barely hear firecrackers now. I remember the whole street popping at New Year's when I was a kid. Did you ever set any off?"

Find something you have in common and say it out loud: "Turns out we both like wasabi." "Oh, you don't like Jia Zhangke's films either?" "I thought about killing myself once as a kid too."

Steer toward something that happened in the past — in other words, turn the conversation into storytelling. For material, try your own embarrassing moments, or make fun of yourself. Showing someone your unflattering side lowers their guard and loosens the mood. When you tell a story, pack in as much detail and feeling as you can, or use questions to draw the other person into filling in their own. Take "First time meeting an internet date, and I let out a loud fart in the car — mortifying, but we ended up together anyway," and expand it: "My stomach was killing me that day, like a bunch of tiny forks stabbing me. And then I realized — I needed to fart. The harder I held it in, the worse the pain got; it went from my stomach down into my thighs. I ended up lifting myself off the seat, one hand on the car door and one on the dashboard, looking like a kidnapping victim, and still it kept coming, and in that sealed car it felt like living through the sack of a village. I figured that was our first date and our last. We've been married a year now."

Happy New Year!

Cover and inline images by: Zheng Shuya