What to ask a psychic

A good question names one person, says what actually happened, and leaves the answer room to have a shape. His name is Ryan, we talked every day for four months, he went cold in June and I can't work out why. That gets you a reading. The two shapes people reach for when they're nervous don't: the wide one, what do you see for me, and the closed one, will he text me today, yes or no. Both come back thin, for opposite reasons.

You don't have to be clever about it. Specific is the whole trick, and then letting her answer with more than one syllable.

What follows is the shapes that open a reading up, the same nervous questions rewritten so they land, what to say about yourself before you ask, and the few things nobody can answer however you word them.

Why the question decides the reading

Here's the advantage we have, said plainly, and it's the reason this page exists. We're on the other side of the chat window. We see the first message a person sends before anyone has helped her phrase it, and we see what happened next. Which openings turned into a conversation that went somewhere, and which ones got a good reply and then stopped dead, because there was nowhere for the reader to go and the woman typing could feel it.

Same readers. Same night. Completely different readings. The difference is nearly always sitting in the first message.

The mechanism isn't mysterious, and how a reader actually builds a reading is written out elsewhere on this site. She's working with two things: what you handed her, and what the cards do against it. Hand her a topic and you get a topic-sized answer, which is the horoscope voice everyone recognises and nobody believes. Hand her a person with a date attached and the same card has something to bite on.

So the reading is partly your work. Not the mystical half. The naming half.

The shapes that get you somewhere

Name the person. Ryan, Dan, my sister, my manager. A pronoun with nothing behind it holds the whole reading one step back from the actual thing, and you can hear it in what comes back.

Say what happened, and when. He went quiet on the 14th. She borrowed the money in January and it's July now. I got the job in June and he's been odd since. A date gives a reader something to read forward from instead of hovering over the general situation.

Ask about state rather than facts. What is he doing with this. Is it stalled or moving. Is his side shut or only closed over. Those are the questions that produce the lines people quote back to us months later.

Ask why rather than whether. Whether he's coming back is one bit of information and you'll doubt it either way. Why he does this, what happens in him at the point it gets real, what you keep missing about him, all of that has somewhere to go.

And ask the one you're embarrassed by. Not the presentable version you'd give a friend over coffee. Whatever the actual sentence is, she's heard it, probably twice already tonight.

The same questions, rewritten

Six shapes that stall, and the version of each that works. The situation doesn't change. Only the wording, and the wording is doing more than you'd think.

"What do you see for me?" becomes "Ryan, four months of talking every day, cold since June. What's going on on his end?" The first asks a reader to guess which of your problems you meant, so she guesses or she generalises, and either way you spend the opening on it.

"Will he text me back, yes or no?" becomes "He read it on Sunday and hasn't answered. Is he sitting on it or has he finished?" One syllable can't be checked and can't be built on, and you'll spend the rest of the night deciding whether to believe it. The rewrite asks for the mechanism, which is the part that tells you anything.

"Am I going to be all right?" becomes "This has been going on since March and I can't tell if it's stuck or moving. When does it ease?" The soft question gets a soft answer. Nobody minds you asking it. It just comes back with nothing you can hold.

"Where is he tonight, who's he with?" becomes "Is his attention on this or somewhere else, and did that change in June?" The first can't be answered by anybody, here or anywhere. The second is the thing underneath it, and that one is readable.

"Should I text him?" becomes "If I send it, what am I walking into?" A reader who tells you to hit send has stopped reading and started instructing, and she isn't the one living your Tuesday afternoon. Ask for the read. The button stays yours.

"Prove it, tell me something about myself first." becomes "Here's what I think is going on. Tell me where I've got it wrong." Testing a reader is fair and we'd do it too. But a test with nothing in it can only be passed by flattery, and the version that hands her something to disagree with tells you far more about whether she's reading or performing.

What to say about yourself first

Less than people think, and one thing more than they want to.

A first name for whoever this is about. That's the piece that changes the most.

One date. When it started, when it changed, or when you last heard from him. Any of the three will do and you don't need all three.

The version of events with the unflattering bit still in it. The account you give people at work has been sanded down, and a reader can only read what she's holding.

A birth date if you have one and feel like giving it. Stella works from the chart and will want it. The others don't need it, and plenty of good readings happen without one.

And what you've already decided. If you've made your mind up and want a second opinion on it, say so, because that's a different reading from I have no idea what to do and it saves you both a lot of circling.

You won't be asked to name a card, pick a spread, or explain why you're doing this at all.

Questions by situation

An ex. What was it actually, the whole thing. What's he carrying about the ending that he's never said out loud. Is his side shut or closed over. There's a fuller page on what a reading about an ex covers if that's why you're here tonight.

A silence. He read it on Sunday and there's been nothing since. Ask what the silence is made of. Avoidance, overwhelm and a decision he's already taken look identical from your side of the phone and read completely differently in a spread, which is the whole of why he's ignoring you.

Someone new. Six weeks in and he runs hot and cold. Ask what you're dealing with rather than whether he likes you. Is this how he is with everyone. What does he do at the point something starts to matter. Is anything else running alongside this.

Work. Should I take it is what people type. What am I not seeing about this job is what pays. Gillian gets most of these, so bring the actual decision and the date it has to be made by.

A decision of any kind. Ask both roads. What does staying look like, what does going look like, where is each one heading. A reader will read you two roads and hand the choosing straight back, which is also the honest answer to wait or move on.

What a reading cannot answer

His location tonight. Whoever's sitting beside him. What's in his messages. Nobody has any of that, so a question shaped like that comes back either as a refusal or as something invented, and from your side of the screen those two look the same. Ask what he's doing with this instead. That one reads, and it was what you wanted anyway.

Names, initials, where she works, which evenings they meet. A reader here won't produce those, because they'd be invented, and inventions land on real people who did nothing.

An exact date. You get a window, read off where the pressure is building, and if that window falls later than you were hoping you'll be told that too.

And what a free adult chooses to do next, which is nobody's to see. A reading hands you a clearer picture of the ground. What you then do doesn't transfer to anyone else.

How to follow up on what lands

This is where readings get good, and it's the most skipped move of the lot.

When something lands, say so, and ask for more of that specific thing. That's the one, he does go brisk, why does he do that. She'll follow it, and the third message is usually better than the first, because by then she knows where the live wire is.

When something's wrong, correct her. Wrong is useful. If she's reading the silence as anger and you know it's shame, tell her, and watch what happens to the read. Nothing tells you more about a reader than what she does with being contradicted.

And keep one question in your pocket for the end: what would you say I haven't asked about. It turns up the thing you came in carrying and never mentioned. People ask it and then go quiet for a minute.

Type the specific one

Nobody's marking this, and there's no wording that unlocks anything. There's only the difference between a question about a situation and a question about nothing in particular.

So open with the person's name, the thing that happened, and the bit you can't work out. Three lines, lowercase, no run-up. She'll ask for whatever else she needs.

If you're stuck on the phrasing, borrow the shape from the top of this page. His name is blank, this happened in blank, and what I can't work out is blank.

There's a reader in there now, and the chat opens in about the time it takes to hand over an email address. First 200 credits free, no card. Which leaves the sentence you deleted twice, so send that one.