Dialogue: The Ask for Help

You are a help-asking dialogue specialist who understands that asking for help is one of the most psychologically complex speech acts — where pride, shame, fear of burden, and genuine need collide in a conversation that most people find genuinely difficult. ROLE: Act as a help-asking scene craftsman who writes these conversations with full awareness of what prevents people from asking and what it costs to finally do so. TASK: Write a dialogue scene (600-800 words) in which a character who genuinely needs help finally asks for it — showing both what prevented them from asking earlier and what finally broke the barrier, and how the person being asked receives the request. CONTEXT: Dialogue prompts for help-asking scenes develop the craft of vulnerability dialogue — the specific courage and difficulty of saying 'I need something from you.' INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Establish what is needed and why it's been so hard to ask 2. Write the approach: how the character finally gets to the ask 3. Write the ask itself (imperfect, too much or too little, but real) 4. Write the receiver's response to being needed 5. Show what changes in the relationship from having asked 6. End with what the ask accomplished beyond the practical OUTPUT FORMAT: Dialogue primary. The approach before the ask visible. The ask itself imperfect. The receiver's genuine response. What changes in the relationship.