writeworld:

Anonymous asked: Can you help with conversation starters? Like how to get your character interacting with a character who is more on the recluse side?

Sure thing, anon! Here a a few tips for encouraging believable interactions between reclusive characters and their peers:

1. Ask a question. This is my favorite tactic. Right off the bat, at the very onset of dialogue, have a character (not the recluse) show up and ask a question. A few examples:
   • “What are you doing here?”
   • “How can I help you?”
   • “How do you take your coffee?”
   • “Where were you this morning?”

   These questions all have two notable things in common.

   1. They are about the recluse. They use the word you. Get the recluses to talk about themselves or things that they know, and you’ll have a much easier time of it. If they have to respond to questions when they don’t know the answers, reclusive characters may not be prone to productive runs of dialogue.
   2. They’re open-ended. The more outgoing character is asking a question that must be answered with something other than a “yes” or a “no”. You want it to be something leading, something that forces the reclusive character to either give a legitimate response or be totally rude.
2. Give them something worth talking about. If you hand her a bomb or him the front page of the September 11th, 2001 issue of the New York Times, you’re essentially passing along a conversation piece. Now the characters have something in common: they’ve both witnessed something worth exploring through dialogue. It might be that they’ve both encountered an odd person or survived a plane crash or witnessed a crime or eaten crappy pizza. Regardless, give them something notable in common, something worth taking about, and the reclusive character might even kick off the dialogue!  
3. Physically give or take away. This is a bit more specific than handing a reclusive character something worth talking about. If the reclusive character wants or doesn’t want something, and the more outgoing character is the person that can give or take away that thing, there’s a conversation there. You might start by the more outgoing person presenting a thing like:
   • hot tea
   • pen
   • gun
   • textbook
   • infant

   Now have the reclusive character react through dialogue.

   • hot tea: “Wow! That’s so nice! You didn’t have to do that…”
   • pen: “Thanks. Mine just ran out of ink. How did you know?”
   • gun: “Why would I need this?”
   • textbook: “That’s not the right edition.”
   • infant: “Can’t you get someone else to watch your kid?”

   In a few of those responses, the reclusive character did an interesting thing: they asked a question. Questions are a cheap and easy way to keep dialogue going. Get both sides asking open-ended questions that the other can answer or that they can answer together, and you’ve got a full-on conversation started.
   Enough with the giving. What about the taking away? Imagine if the more outgoing character was taking that thing away. How might your reclusive character react to having an infant grabbed from his arms or xer hot tea spilled or the pen taken right out of her hand while she’s try to write? That would make for some dialogue, no? How can you invent interesting situations for your characters to have items taken away or given to them in such a way that it would spark a verbal reaction?

4. Super-size the awkward factor. So much so that they have to actually say something. If you’ve got two people trapped in an elevator, for instance, or if they’re sitting side-by-side in the only two seats left on the bus, or if someone just fell off of their horse into a pond, there might be room for some dialogue in there.
5. Don’t forget why dialogue exists. Dialogue exists, at least in part, to reveal a character’s motives and personality, give the reader information about the plot, and move the reader through the narrative in an interesting way. If you stray from these goals with your writing just to coax a reclusive character out of their shell, you might not be using your dialogue most effectively. A reclusive character can stay quiet for chapters without any problem if you have no good reason to make them speak.

For more on dialogue, check out This is a Towel: Dialogue. Also consider reading The Passion of Dialogue to learn more about why a character, and by extension a writer, might choose to communicate through dialogue.

Thank you for your question! If you have any comments on this article or other questions about writing, you can message us here!

-C