Overheard on a Train: Turn Awkward Small Talk into Big Stories

Why trains are basically moving story generators

There’s something about trains that makes people drop their usual armor. You’re stuck together, but only for a while. There’s no steering wheel to grip, no seatbelt lecture, just that soft rocking motion and the low murmur of strangers trying not to be weird.

On a train, everyone is in-between. Between cities, between jobs, between relationships, between versions of themselves. That “in transit” feeling is gold for fiction, because characters in motion are characters on the verge of change.

You get:

• Fragments of conversations with no beginning or end.
• People from wildly different backgrounds forced into the same narrow aisle.
• Tiny conflicts over armrests, noise, food smells, and personal space.
• Announcements that interrupt at the worst possible moment.

If you’ve ever half-heard a sentence like, “Well, after the incident with the flamingo, I couldn’t stay,” and then the train pulled into a tunnel and you missed the rest—you already know how this works. Your brain fills the gap. That gap is where stories live.

How to listen like a writer (without being a creep)

You don’t need to record people or lean in like a spy. You’re not writing a transcript; you’re hunting for sparks.

Try this next time you’re on a train—or just imagine it if you’re writing from your couch:

• Let your ears catch random lines, then deliberately stop listening. Make up the rest.
• Notice rhythms: does someone talk in short bursts, or long, wandering paragraphs?
• Watch body language: the crossed arms, the tapping foot, the forced laugh.
• Pay attention to what isn’t said. That loaded silence after, “So… did you tell her yet?”

You’re collecting textures, not secrets. Change details, mix people together, exaggerate. You’re writing fiction, not a court transcript.

Prompt: The stranger who knows too much

Imagine you sit down, and the person across from you smiles like they recognize you. They start talking as if they’ve met you before. They know your hometown, your college, your favorite snack. They’re not exactly right, but they’re close enough to freak you out.

Now twist it.

Maybe they’ve mistaken you for someone else. Maybe they’re lying. Maybe you are the person they think you are, but from a life you tried to leave behind. Or maybe you’ve been posting your whole life online and you’re finally meeting someone who’s been quietly watching.

Write the conversation as it unfolds over a two-hour ride. Let the tension rise every time the train stops and the doors open—will you get off early? Will they? What question finally breaks the illusion?

Some writers like to anchor this in a specific route. Think New York to Boston, or Chicago to St. Louis. Actual geography can help you pace the conversation: big reveals just before major stations, quiet lulls when you’re crossing long, empty stretches.

Prompt: The fight that has to stay polite

Take two people who absolutely should not be having a fight in public… and trap them in a crowded train.

Maybe it’s a boss and employee who “accidentally” ended up in the same carriage after a disastrous performance review. Or divorced parents handing off their kid for the weekend. Or two ex-friends who both thought the other moved to a different country.

They’re furious, but they’re also surrounded by strangers. So everything has to be coded.

Instead of, “You ruined my life,” you get: “You always did like… dramatic decisions.”

Instead of, “You’re lying,” you get: “That’s not how I remember it.”

Let the conversation skate right on the edge of blowing up. Use small train details as pressure points: a delayed departure, a crying baby, a glitchy announcement, someone’s suitcase rolling into their feet. Every tiny irritation becomes another log on the emotional fire.

You can even give the point of view to a third person: the teen in the next seat who’s pretending to scroll but is absolutely live-blogging this in their head.

Prompt: The secret in the overhead luggage

You know that moment when the train jolts and something thumps in the overhead rack? Use that.

Your character hears a sound above them—a clink, a muffled whine, a sudden thud. The person who owns the bag looks way too nervous.

Start with a casual question:

“Hey, I think your bag just moved.”

Where you go from there is your playground. Maybe it’s an illegal pet. Maybe it’s stolen tech. Maybe it’s something perfectly harmless that only sounds ominous, and the real story is why the owner is so jumpy.

Write the entire scene as a back-and-forth conversation, with tiny stage directions: the way the owner keeps glancing at the security camera, the way your narrator keeps checking the emergency hammer.

If you want to layer in some realism about travel rules or security, you can always check actual guidelines from sites like the Transportation Security Administration or even general travel safety tips from USA.gov. Then, of course, completely ignore them in your fiction and let chaos reign.

Prompt: Two strangers, one shared memory

This one’s softer, but it can hit hard.

Two people who have never met sit down across from each other. After a few minutes, one of them says something tiny that makes the other freeze. Maybe it’s a street name. A childhood camp. A very specific brand of candy that no one under 40 remembers.

Slowly, they realize they share a memory. Maybe they were in the same school during a fire drill. Maybe they both saw the same accident on a highway years ago. Maybe they both knew the same person—someone who’s gone now.

The conversation becomes a kind of archaeological dig. They brush away wrong details, correct each other, argue over what actually happened. Memory is messy, and that’s half the fun.

You can play with unreliable narration here. Let them misremember on purpose. Let one of them cling to a version of the past that never quite happened.

If you like reading about how memory actually works (and how often it lies), there’s fascinating research from places like Harvard’s psychology department and memory studies in the National Institutes of Health universe. Again, your story doesn’t have to be scientifically tidy. It just has to feel true.

Prompt: The train that never stops where it should

Now we tilt into the slightly surreal.

Your character boards what should be a totally normal train. Commuter route, same as always. But the announcements are… off. The station names are almost right, but not quite. The voice mispronounces familiar places. Outside the window, the landmarks are a little wrong.

They strike up a conversation with the person next to them, trying to figure out if anyone else notices. Some people seem fine. Others look quietly panicked. The conductor insists everything is normal.

Use the conversation to drip-feed the weirdness. Maybe the stranger claims this is how it’s always been. Maybe they remember a different version of the city entirely. Maybe they’re relieved, because their version of the world finally matches this one.

You can lean into speculative fiction here—time slip, parallel universe, glitch in reality—or keep it psychological. Is your narrator losing it, or waking up?

Prompt: Eavesdropping on the wrong moment

Sometimes the best prompt is just a single overheard line.

Imagine your character is half-asleep, headphones in, when a sentence cuts through the noise: “If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to disappear.”

They open their eyes. Two people behind them are talking in low, intense voices. Our character catches just enough to spin wild theories, but never the full story.

Write from the eavesdropper’s point of view. Let them misinterpret everything. Maybe they think they’re overhearing a crime, but it’s actually a messy breakup. Or they think it’s a breakup, and it’s actually witness protection. Or a medical decision. Or a business meltdown.

The key is restraint. They don’t get the whole conversation. They fill the gaps with their own fears and fantasies.

If you like playing with anxiety and catastrophizing, this is a great place to research how the brain tends to jump to worst-case scenarios. Sites like the National Institute of Mental Health have plenty of material on anxiety patterns that you can twist into fictional overthinking.

Prompt: The last carriage confession

It’s late. The train is almost empty. Your character ends up in the last carriage with just one other person. There’s that weird, echoing quiet.

For whatever reason—fatigue, loneliness, one too many tiny plastic cups of bad wine—they start talking. And then they keep talking. And suddenly they’re saying things they’ve never told anyone.

Maybe they’re confessing to something they did. Maybe they’re admitting something they want to do. Maybe they’re just finally telling the truth about how unhappy they are.

The twist? The listener isn’t who they seem. They might be connected to the secret. They might be a reporter. They might be the person your confessor has been hiding from—only neither of them realizes it until the very end.

Write the whole scene as a two-person script. Let the rhythm of the train—slowing, speeding up, stopping—shape the beats of the confession.

Prompt: The conversation that survives only in a notebook

Not all train conversations are spoken out loud. Some happen on paper.

Think about a character who’s too shy, or can’t speak the local language well, or is nonverbal. They start a conversation with the person across from them by writing in a notebook and turning it around.

At first, it’s practical:

“Is this seat free?”

“What time do we arrive?”

Then it becomes more personal. Jokes. Doodles. A confession. A sketch of the person opposite, with some tiny detail exaggerated.

Now imagine the train suddenly stops between stations. The lights flicker. There’s an announcement about a delay. People groan. Your two silent pen-pals now have extra time.

Write their entire exchange through what’s written and drawn in the notebook. No spoken dialogue at all. Let the handwriting change as they relax or get nervous. Let the doodles reveal more than the words.

Prompt: The kid who asks the wrong question

Children on trains are… honest. Brutally so.

Picture a restless kid stuck in the seat opposite your main character. The adults are half-asleep, scrolling, or arguing quietly. The kid, bored out of their mind, starts asking questions. The kind of questions adults avoid.

“Why are you crying?”

“Why don’t you have a ring?”

“Are you running away?”

Kids don’t respect emotional boundaries, and that’s perfect for fiction. Your character now has a choice: deflect, joke, or tell the truth. Each answer opens a different story.

You can also flip it. Maybe the kid is the one hiding something, and the adult slowly realizes it through their offhand comments.

FAQ: Writing train conversations without derailing your story

Do I need to have actually ridden a lot of trains to write these?

Not really. It helps, of course, but you can fake a lot with observation and a bit of research. Watch train vlogs, read travel blogs, pay attention to small details like announcements, seat layouts, and the way people stash their bags. The emotional truth matters more than the precise model of the carriage.

How do I keep dialogue from feeling flat or forced?

Let people talk past each other. Real conversations are messy. Characters misunderstand, interrupt, change the subject, or answer the question they wish they’d been asked. Sprinkle in small actions—staring out the window, fiddling with a ticket, checking the time—so it doesn’t turn into two floating heads trading lines.

Is it okay to use real conversations I’ve overheard?

Use them as compost, not as a copy-paste. Change details, mix people together, alter locations, and avoid lifting anything that feels too personal or identifiable. You’re aiming for “inspired by the vibe,” not “this is exactly what that guy in the red jacket said at 8:32 AM.”

How long should a train conversation scene be?

Long enough to do its job. If the scene is about a single turning point, it might just be a page of sharp, tense dialogue. If it’s the heart of the story—two strangers unpacking their lives over a four-hour journey—it can stretch, as long as every beat reveals something new.

Can I mix genres with these prompts?

Absolutely. Train conversations work in romance, horror, sci-fi, mystery, literary fiction, you name it. The carriage is just a container. Fill it with ghosts, time travelers, undercover agents, or two ordinary people trying to decide whether to go home or get off at the next unknown station.

Next time you’re on a train, or even just watching one rattle by, treat every carriage like a row of tiny theaters. Behind every window, someone is arguing, confessing, planning, regretting, or just trying not to spill their coffee. Your job, as a writer, is to imagine what they’re saying—and then push it one step further than real life ever would.