So, I usually open direct, and often, this works great. Sometimes, however, I find that as I talk to a girl, she isn't really giving much back and the interaction isn't going anywhere. She will typically give one word responses and not really give me anything to build rapport on. It's not that I run out of things to say, but really, I don't know what exactly TO say or do to get out of this situation. Certainly doesn't happen in every interaction, but it is enough that I want to get it handled.

To me, it just sounds like the girl is bored. Obviously, like you said, you gotta figure out how to get the girl to invest in the conversation a little bit more. In order to do this, you have to make the conversation fun, light-hearted, playful...THEN you can move into some of the more serious conversation once she's attracted to you. It doesn't take much, and it's not that hard (I know, it's not that hard once you know how to do it...but when you're just learning it can suck). You just gotta do things that get her emotionally invested in the conversation. Make it more personal to her. Tease her about the way she says something, or a weird quirk that you notice about her, but do it in a fun way where she knows you actually like her and are just giving her a hard time...and voila! you're flirting! yay!!! then once you get past the flirting stage (1-2 minutes) you can move into something a little more serious and you'll get a lot more lengthy answers from the girl. But be warned, you ARE going to fuck up when you first start doing this...learning to tease right can be tricky and takes some practice...I got slapped more than once in the process, lol. Good luck!

As a addendum to the above, you need to temper the degree of your teases to how well you know the girl. The more you know the girl, the harder you can tease...obviously a cold approach on the street in the middle of the day, you're not going to say something like, "wow, nice shoes! I didn't realize Courtney Love was having a garage sale" or whatever, whereas you may say that to a close friend that you've known for a while. Cold-approach, on the street, in the middle of the day, you gotta keep it VERY light...you might not even tease, you might just "notice" something interesting about them...kinda keep it more in neutral territory where she's trying to figure out what you meant by that...play around with it, you'll find what works for you. Practice makes perfect.

When you fall into this situation, you need to push her to decide how she feels about you, which means you need to become edgier and more controversial. I always tell guys, don't ever let a girl walk away from you thinking you were boring or uninteresting, FORCE her to decide she likes you or not. It's a concept I call "Polarization" and actually plan on writing about it a lot in the coming months.

Definitely looking forward to seeing your stuff on polarization. What do you mean by edgy and controversial (I don't need a treatise or anything, but wondering if you were more going in the direction of humor that could be taken as offensive, or sexually escalating more, or sexual humor etc.)