Alright, here’s some basic advice for when you want to have a conversation.

If someone asks you a question that can be suitably answered with one or two words, it can be helpful to append a question of one’s own to the response. Even returning the same question is often sufficient.

Consider:

X: Hey, how’s it going?
Y: Good.

vs

X: Hey, how’s it going?
Y: Not bad, yourself?

Where the former leaves person X having to either carry the conversation onwards by formulating another question on the spot or just disengage, the latter keeps the conversation going by giving them a question from which they can either springboard into a more detailed response or pivot to another topic.