How to have better conversations at parties

Avoid small talk purgatory – and try these techniques instead.

I hate small talk.

I hate its air-kissing insincerity: its ‘SO GOOD TO SEE YOU’, ‘I’m fine!’, ‘You look well’. Its performative nature; empty phrases exchanged while everyone eyes each other up and assesses who’s had Botox. How it acts as a funnel for conversational faux pas, like ‘When are you having another one?’, ‘Have you lost weight?’ ‘Where are you from originally?,’ etc.

I appreciate that loudly declaring one’s aversion to small talk can come across as arrogant or antisocial, at worst misanthropic – especially during festive party season, when ‘tis the season to exchange niceties over house wine.

If I were being generous, I’d say that my personal vendetta is because I love small talk’s antithesis: big talk, those sprawling, meandering conversations you have around the dinner table, on a car journey or across the bed from someone. The latter makes me feel like, despite our essential aloneness inside our own heads, we’re able to connect intimately through conversation, in a way that feels like the point of life itself.

Small talk is the opposite. Sometimes, in the most excruciating of small-talk situations, I feel myself zoning out, like I’m playing The Sims – transcendentally looming over this conversation and innumerable similar ones taking place all over the world. We could be any group of people, performing the same role play of: ‘Hello! Good to see you! Are you well?’/‘I’m good thanks! The weather is awful, isn’t it?’

Then, the ‘How’s work?’ and ‘How old is little Petunia now'? ad infinitum, exchanged routinely – the purgatory of small talk, the people talking without listening in that Simon & Garfunkel song.

Ending the small talk tyranny

Maybe I’m biased, because several of my closest friends share this distaste: one subconsciously starts doing a loud yoga-style dragon breath when the strain of polite small talk gets too much, another physically removes herself from the conversation altogether.

A lot of people, meanwhile, grin and bear it. But I do suspect, beneath this endurance, there’s a received wisdom that small talk is something we have to do, out of basic politeness. That it’s just the way it is; a foregone conclusion that characterises parties (and makes many of us dread them).

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But it doesn’t have to be! The best conversationalists I know have a knack for turning small talk into something mutually engaging almost immediately. An exchange where you come away having learnt something unexpected, or shared a joke, or developed empathy in a new direction. That’s the wonderful thing about strangers and/or people you haven’t seen in a while: you never know what’s going to happen. Unless it’s small talk, in which case I’d rather not have that predictability.

This isn’t about going from 0 to 100. I’m not advocating that one moment you’re making chit-chat about the canapés, the next you’re ploughing your unsuspecting victims with The Proust Questionnaire: ‘What is your greatest fear?’, ‘What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?’, ‘Which historical figure do you most identify with?’ and – while you’re at it – ‘HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE?’

There’s a lot of potential in between those two extremes.

As we enter one of the most sociable times of the year, I surveyed friends and readers of the newsletter, foraging for advice on turning small talk into something better, which I’ve combined below with my own preferred methods (as a self-identifying small-talk allergy sufferer).

How to turn small talk into ‘big’ talk

Throw in a self-disclosure bomb

When I’m feeling the need to spice up the conversational soup, I throw in something a bit personal. I think it’s easy to conflate this with i) talking about yourself too much or ii) oversharing. But it’s not so black and white. Obviously, we don’t have to go around declaring our secrets to anyone and everyone. But a little bit of self-disclosure can work wonders in getting others to open up themselves (a psychological phenomenon known as self-disclosure reciprocity).

As much as this sounds Machiavellian, it’s something that I’ve always done naturally without knowing the name of it. However, it’s a quirk I’ve leant into more recently as I’ve come to realise how effectively it deepens a conversation beyond small talk, giving whomever I’m speaking to permission to reveal something a bit personal.

Recent personal examples of self-disclosure include ‘I ate so much delicious Ethiopian food yesterday evening I couldn’t sleep, have you tried it?’ and ‘I have a guilty obsession with Gen Z pop music at the moment – are you on the Chappell Roan bandwagon?’ and ‘I spent the whole afternoon unsuccessfully hunting down apple-green cardigans on Vinted – what’s your go-to knitwear brand?’

OK, maybe you might think these are terrible things to share in a social setting, revealing as they do my gluttony; occasional insomnia; unimaginative music taste; and internet shopping rabbit holes. However, they’re also humanising statements, and steer the conversation towards someone else baring their humanity, too.

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