What to write in your first letter to a penpal (with 12 openers)

The first letter to a stranger is the hardest letter you will write, and almost everyone writes the same one: Hi! I'm 29, from Lisbon, I like hiking and reading and I'm looking for a penpal to share about our lives. Tell me about yourself!

It is friendly. It is polite. It is unanswerable. There is nothing in it that another person can pick up and hold. The reply, if it comes, will be the same letter with the city changed, and the correspondence will end at letter two, politely, for no reason either of you can name.

Here is the other way.

The one-small-thing rule

Write about one small, true thing from your week. Not your life — your week. The kettle that clicked off and nobody came. The bakery on your corner that started opening at six again. The email you should have answered in 2021.

This works for a reason that is almost embarrassing to say out loud: a small true thing is specific, and a specific thing can be answered. Your hobbies cannot. "I like reading" gives the other person nothing to do. "I finished a book at 2 a.m. and then lay there being angry at the ending" gives them a whole letter.

It is also how you sound like a person rather than a listing. Nobody has ever fallen into a correspondence with a list of interests.

The shape (four parts, none of them long)

1. Start in the middle. No Dear stranger, I hope this finds you well. Start with the thing. The kettle clicked off and nobody came. The reader is already in your kitchen.

2. Say what it was like, not what it means. Two or three sentences. The window, the light, the sound. Resist explaining why you are telling them. If you have chosen the right small thing, the why is obvious.

3. Turn it, slightly. One sentence that goes a little further than a stranger would expect. I have started to like the empty kitchen, which worries me. This is the sentence that makes someone write back — not because it is dramatic, but because it is honest and short and you didn't have to say it.

4. End on a question they can only answer from their own life. What does your morning smell like? One question. Under everything else, on its own line. This is the door.

That is the whole letter. Five to ten sentences. It should take you longer to think about than to write.

How long should it be?

Shorter than you think, longer than a text. On Kindredly the minimum for an open letter is one real line — twenty characters, about ten words — and most of the letters that get answered are between sixty and two hundred words. Long enough to be a letter; short enough that the reply is not a homework assignment.

If you are writing on paper, one side of one sheet. If you fill the second side, you are writing about yourself and not to them.

Twelve openers that get answered

Borrow one. Change the details to yours. The details are the letter.

1. The kettle clicked off and nobody came.
2. I fixed the wobbly chair today, which I have been meaning to do since March.
3. There is a person I keep almost texting.
4. My plant died and I cried about something completely different.
5. I laughed at work today and meant it. First time in a while I didn't have to remember to.
6. Third city this year. I've got good at knowing which box the kettle is in.
7. I made tea for one this morning and didn't feel like a tragedy about it.
8. I have a playlist for a person who doesn't know they have a playlist.
9. Nobody warned me that getting better is boring.
10. Started saying no this year. Most of what I was carrying turned out not to be load-bearing.
11. I'm only honest after midnight and only in writing and only to people who can't place my face.
12. If I had answered that email in 2021, would I be somewhere else right now?

Notice that not one of them says what the writer does for a living.

Five things to leave out

• Your age and city in the first line. Let them find out. On the good platforms they can't ask anyway.
• "Tell me about yourself." It is not a question; it is a job.
• A photo, or a request for one. You are looking for a person who writes back, and a face tells you nothing about that.
• Apologies for your writing. Sorry, English isn't my first language — nobody minds, and the sentence costs you your best line.
• More than one question. They will answer the easiest one and feel guilty about the rest.

What happens next

If it goes well, they will answer the question, and their answer will hand you your second letter. Write that one the same way: one small thing from their letter that you noticed, one small thing from your week, one question. Keep doing it. Around the fifth exchange you will realise you know this person better than some people you see every day, and you will have to decide what to do about that. (There are questions for that moment, too.)

If you would rather see a few first letters before writing one, fifteen of them are on the desk today. They have no names on them. Whichever one you pick up was written to you.