good job on going out and opening sets dude good to see ya gettin yaself out there. a good tip that i was given was just to keep it simple, i have read mass amounts of theroy on this and as a result i had so much infomation in my head and worrying about when to use it, that it had a bad effect on my sarges.
you now when you reach the social hook point when you start getting IOI's from the group, such as, they will have more open body language, thel commit more to the convosation, thel stop looking at eachother and look more at you.
after the hook point, natural gamers will get some sort of connection with the target and some wth the group, like by elicting hooks and connecting with them on a positive level. you can use some C&F, kindo escalate, basicaly after the hook point is reached your in Mid-Game so look up mid game threads if thats your sticking point
storys should be short and sweet, if your finding yours too long then think about the key points of that storys (like major events in it) keep those in and shorten everything else.
as for going into routines just root them, like the rings routine u can use jst by noticing a ring on the hbs finger, best friend test can come after u ask ow long they have known eachother, rooting is a great tool for routines as it means there is a reason you are doing them.
wishing you look in the future m8, learn from your mistakes in the feild and just have fun with it. its a hard game to master so dont let it get on top of you, if you have fun with it, youl get alot more practice in and enjoy the process alot more too
