1. Never trust people who appear to be in it for the money by charging large sums of money. Well, er, unlike her humble self who, for the thousandth time, drives around in a Volkswagon and lives in a simple apartment and has to because she has churches and a giant staff to support. (Maybe no one but Robert Lancaster is going to mention the properties, the money, the little matter of the churches paying tithes back to her, having a relatively small staff, etc.)
2. Never trust people who tell you there's such a thing as curses or voodoo or possession or charge you to remove same. Enter lengthy commentary on why. Thanks, Sylvia, for having told us that now about 1000 times in your previous 1000 similar books.
3. Never trust a psychic who reads from a script. She never does this. No she just says the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, possibly because she can/doesn't care/is being paid $850 anyway. Be sure and mention the time she turned down the 1-800 psychic gig due to her having a high sense of morals and honor, etc.
4. Point out that real psychics never have to use silly things like tarot cards or crystals that she herself of course doesn't use, because real psychics just know stuff (see #5 below), and because she comes from a long line of psychics going back to about 1300 A.D. (the line has gotten quite a bit longer in the past 20 years, first going back to her grandma and now back quite a ways further, 200 or years or so - I assume there's no reason it won't continue to grow and reach back to before recorded history eventually).
5. Here are some tricks-of-the-fradulent-trade to look out for: (Enter smattering of cold-reading/hot-reading tricks that Sylvia Browne doesn't use because in fact she uses nothing. She doesn't bother. She makes plenty of money without having to go to all that trouble.)
6. Mix in a bunch of hooey about other supposedly historical and genuine famous psychics she wants people to think she's similar to, add some famous debunkings (ectoplasm, maybe, since no one believes in that anymore anyway, do they?) for believability, ramble on for many pages on the history of the psychic thing, pulling material from previous writings.
Oh, and 6. Remind people never listen to anything the skeptics have to say because they are all godless pagans anyway, and we all know, well, er, we all know that means something bad. Sylvia herself is just doing this for God and here she is, being persecuted by the skeptics, but alas that is part of her noble mission, to have to deal with all of that.
There, buyer beware.
