How to make any conversation more interesting

How do you feel when you see this photo? 

It's uncomfortable and unsatisfying, right? There's a glaring hole in the middle of it. Your mind wants to fill the hole, and it can probably do a pretty good job guessing, but it would be a lot better if you could just see the whole thing! 

You can do the same thing in conversation with the Open Loop Statement. 

An open loop statement is one where you leave out some critical information so that the other person feels compelled to ask you about it. It's like showing them the picture above. They want to know what's inside the hole.

Here are some examples:

"The movie was great! It's probably my second-favorite movie of the summer."

"People here are a lot friendlier than where I'm from."

"The flight was delayed, but it was nothing compared to the time I got stranded and had to rent a car with 3 strangers."

In each case, the other person is wondering: 

What was your favorite movie? 

Where are you from? 

Wow, tell me that story! 

And all of a sudden, you get to fill in the gap and say something interesting, filling in the gap. So you get to fill in the whole picture...and to complete the analogy: 

Now isn't that a lot better? 

-geoff