trouble thinking of things to say

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When I talk to people i tend to have a lot of trouble thinking of things to say. I am not sure if it's because I'm scared or not but it's really awkward and I don't like it. What can I do

I have the same problem. some things that help me are mentioning something from the news or recent sports events, asking about something in the environment you're in (in a car, you pass a restaurant and ask the person if they've been there and liked it.), asking about the persons hobbies, vacations, or family.

Also, I've noticed it is good to keep a certain flow to the topics of conversation. So that you are moving from one item which is somehow linked to the previous and so on. It seems to be disliked when a topic is introduced at random.

I have the exact same problem. I very seldom have anything to say. I'm not scared or shy, I just come up empty. I've been aware of having this problem since somewhere in elementary school.
I know how conversations are supposed to go, like a tennis match, as someone here likened it to. But that knowledge doesn't make me come up with anything to say. Very often I just don't have anything more than "yeah". I'm no good with initiatives either, so changing the subject will usually be left to the other person. The idea of asking questions doesn't come naturally to me, I didn't even think about it until I learned on here that one is supposed to. I can seldom think of anything to ask, and I don't like to. It feels invasive, like they should volunteer the information, and asking for it makes me feel creepy.

If anyone has found a solution to this, I hope they'll post a detailed explanation.

I think that's called "autism".

I find it hard to "build" on surface type communication and keep it natural and fluid, so my therapist offered me this piece of great advice: When in doubt, repeat what they have stated in a different way.

Example:
Me "How many pets do you have?"
Them "I have three dogs, I love them like family!"
Me "awesome, so three dogs, huh?"
(Then hopefully by the next statement I will be able to latch on to something and keep it flowing better)

This has worked fairly well for me with normal, everyday chit-chat as well as emotionally taxing conversation. In fact, in the instance of more emotionally charged conversation, I have found that repeating what the other person says occasionally reads as though you are listening, all the while giving your brain a small break.

I find that it's hard to keep a conversation going sometimes because I think what most people my age talk about as small talk can be really stupid. I try, but it's hard when I find the subject so boooooring.

Small talk it is the worst and I have no idea why people enjoy it so much. I also have trouble ending conversations as I usually just walk away as the solution to my problem.

I never participate in small talks. Instead I like to talk about things are interesting to me like history and science and could do it for hours. Just yeastreday I had long discussion with one "friend" of mine about was one ww2 photo shot in 1943 or 1944. It was our only dialog for two weeks - without any "how are you" or "how do yo find last Phillies game".
So as with others. I wish I could find girls with common interests cause it seems the only way for me to start dating (I'm 27 now) but it looks die-hard mission.

Same for me, I go most of the day hardly speaking to people at work apart from work related things. I get a bit paranoid that they think i'm being a bit funny with them but I struggle to make small talk and I hate talking about other people as most of them seem to thrive on at work. Infact I prefer to work on my own when I can.

I have a set of things I comment on which I learned from hearing my mother on the phone when I was a child. I memorized a lot of generic conversation starters just from hearing her side of the conversation. Sometimes she would put the phone on speaker when she was cooking and would talk to people, so I could hear the whole conversation, which put all those independent comments into a context. Often people seem to start with formulaic things, like "how have you been?" And "are you enjoying this nice weather / A lot of rain we have had lately" etc. I use these a lot when I have to interact with others briefly, and even use my mother's vocal inflections / prosody, facial expressions (I used to mimic her a lot), etc.

I come up short once I have to start improvising. I get really anxious and often bring up topics that seem random or unrelated to others, because I am "grasping at straws". I think drama classes might help with this, but I haven't had a chance to learn improv.