Opening the book…
I have saved one of my most closely guarded secrets for this chapter, so lean in. When your companion speaks, you ask them a question, and then, this is the radical part, you listen to what they say, and then you ask another question about that. I realise the sheer nerve of it is dizzying. Most people spend a conversation reloading their next anecdote while the other person's mouth moves, treating dialogue as a queue for monologues. Genuine curiosity is so rare that it lands like a magic trick, when really it is just paying attention. People do not leave a good date thinking you were fascinating; they leave thinking they were fascinating, and they associate that lovely feeling with you.
Ask open questions that cannot be shut down with a yes, and then follow the thread they hand you rather than yanking it back to yourself. If they mention their sister, or their old job, or the country they miss, ask about it; the good stuff is almost always one gentle question deeper than where people stop. Share about yourself too, because this is a conversation and not an interrogation, but let curiosity lead. Put your own cleverness on the back burner and get genuinely interested in how their mind works. You will learn whether you actually like them, which, incidentally, is the entire point of the evening.
Listening is not a firing squad of questions with no offering of your own; nobody wants to feel audited. Trade, don't extract. And if you ask, listen, and follow up all night while they never once ask a thing about you, that lopsidedness is data worth noticing, not a flaw to try harder against.