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Years ago I read Dale Carnegie\u2019s How to Win Friends and Influence People\xa0and found one of the most useful principles from the book was this:\n\nBecome genuinely interested in other people.\n\nCarnegie would meet people at a gathering or party and get them talking about their hobbies and areas of expertise. By being genuinely interested in them\u2014by being curious\u2014he met interesting people, learned a lot, and gathered a wealth of material for his books and lectures.\n\nHe inserted a story in that chapter that every writer should probably hear.\n\nCarnegie said:\nI once took a course in short-story writing at New York University, and during that course the editor of a leading magazine talked to our class. He said he could pick up any one of the dozens of stories that drifted across his desk every day and after a few paragraphs he could feel whether or not the author liked people. "If the author doesn\u2019t like people," he said, "people won\u2019t like his or her stories."\n\nThis hard-boiled editor stopped twice in the course of his talk on fiction writing and apologized for preaching a sermon. "I am telling you," he said, "the same things your preacher would tell you, but remember, you have to be interested in people if you want to be a successful writer of stories." (68)\nYou have to be interested in people if you want to be a successful writer of stories.\n\nMaybe you\u2019d like to be interested in people but you\u2019re shy. Maybe you\u2019re an introvert. Maybe you hate to be in the spotlight. That describes a lot of writers.\n\nIf that\u2019s you, you may find it hard to be curious about people and ask them questions. But it\u2019s a skill you can practice by learning to ask questions and listening. Once you do, you\u2019ll not only begin to gather material and inspiration\u2014you\u2019ll enjoy a side benefit of getting the focus off yourself.\n\nOnce you ask a couple of open-ended questions that get the other person talking, you won\u2019t have to say much more about yourself, which is handy for the shy or introverted person. People will love to tell you about their woodworking hobby, or their recent vacation to Spain, or their daughter\u2019s prize-winning pie at the state fair.\n\nBeing curious about people is also an excellent way to understand people who come from a completely different walk of life or have views that are opposite of yours. Respectfully ask curious questions, listening without the intent to argue or jump in with your own stories, and you may learn how someone ended up with a certain religious belief or political stance and gain deeper understanding about something you\u2019d only barely been exposed to.\n\nNovelists can write more complex characters when they understand more about where real people have come from or why they\u2019ve developed an interest in an uncommon topic or activity.\n\nAs you meet people and show interest, you don\u2019t want to use them, but you can sort of think of conversations as research. Someone could spark an idea for an essay when she mentions a restaurant that shut down where her mom and dad met in the 1960s. A person at the laundromat might tell a story about his great uncle who served in World War II, and that sparks the idea for\xa0a character in your next short story.\n\nCarnegie talks about showing genuine interest in people as a practice for getting to know them through the stories they share when you ask about them. He claims you\u2019ll develop real friendships, get people to like you, and tell better stories because you like people and take a genuine interest in them.\n\nYou\u2019ll tell better stories.\n\nYou\u2019ll tell better stories because you\u2019ll have lots of them, collecting stories from every person you meet.\n\nAnd you\u2019ll tell better stories because you\u2019ll likely develop excellent storytelling skills from people simply by listening to stories told.\n\nLearning to ask open-ended questions and to listen closely as the person responds is a skill not only for journalists but for all writers.\n\nBe genuinely interested in other people,