How to Write Letters to Strangers (and Where to Send Them)

The short answer: you can write letters to strangers through apps (Slowly, Bottled, Spillr's Scrolls), on paper (Postcrossing, or a snail-mail pen pal), or through letter-writing groups that send kind notes to people who need them. Which one suits you depends on a single question: do you want a reply, or do you just want to write?

Most of this page is about the writing itself: why it feels the way it does, and what to actually say. The options are near the end, and there is a fuller comparison in apps like Slowly.

Why writing to a stranger feels so good

People who try it often say the same slightly puzzled thing: it was easier than texting a friend. There are good reasons for that.

You start from scratch

Everyone you know has a version of you on file. Your friends know you as the funny one, or the organised one, or the one who is always fine. A stranger has nothing on file. You are whoever comes across in the letter, which makes it one of the few places you can say something out of character and have it simply be true.

Nothing rides on it

There is no friendship to protect and no history to be consistent with. That is the same reason people tell taxi drivers things they have not told their partner, and it is explained properly here. On paper, the effect is stronger, because you have time to find the right words.

People are warmer than we expect

Research keeps finding that we underestimate strangers. In a 2014 study, Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder asked Chicago commuters to talk to the person next to them on the train. Beforehand, people predicted they would enjoy a quiet ride more. Afterwards, the ones who talked had the better journey. Later work by Epley's group found people also underestimate how much a stranger wants to go beyond small talk. Letters get to skip straight to that part.

Writing slows you down

A letter is not a chat. You can't be interrupted, you can reread it, and you can say the thing in the order you mean it. Plenty of people find out what they actually think halfway through a letter to someone they will never meet.

What to write in a letter to a stranger

The biggest mistake in a first letter is the CV: age, job, hobbies, favourite films. It is safe and it gives the other person nothing to hold. The letters that get warm replies tend to do three things:

1. Start somewhere specific. Where you are, what the weather is doing, what just happened. Specific is interesting; general is a form.
2. Share one small true thing. Not your whole story. One thing you would not put on a profile.
3. End with a question they can answer. Not “tell me about yourself”, which is homework. Something with an easy way in.

Example openings for a first letter

Borrow any of these. Change the details so they are yours.

• “I am writing this on a bus that is very late, which is the only reason I have time to write it. What is the most reliably late thing where you live?”
• “Nobody I know reads the kind of books I read, so I am trying my luck with someone I don't know. What's the last thing you read that you could not shut up about?”
• “Today was one of those days where nothing went wrong and I still felt flat. Is there anything you do on days like that?”
• “I moved here eight months ago and I still do not have a favourite café. What's the place near you that you would take a visitor?”
• “I have never written to a stranger before, so this might be strange. I'm a night-shift nurse, it is 4am, and the ward is finally quiet. What does 4am look like where you are?”
• “Small confession to start with: I have kept a houseplant alive for three years and I am unreasonably proud of it. What's the small thing you are secretly proud of?”

None of these are clever. They work because they sound like a person, and because the question at the end is easy to answer honestly.

A whole first letter, start to finish

“Hello from a kitchen table in a very windy city. I have just finished a long week of being reasonable at work and wanted to talk to someone who isn't expecting anything of me. Something I don't say much: I miss being a beginner at things. Everything I do now, I already know how to do. What's the last thing you were properly bad at, and did you keep going?”

About eighty words. One place, one honest thing, one question. That is plenty.

What to leave out

• Identifying details. Your surname, your street, your workplace, your school. A city is fine; a postcode is not.
• The heaviest thing, first. You can write about something hard, and strangers are often kind about it. But a first letter that is entirely the worst thing that ever happened to you gives the reader no way in. Lead with a smaller true thing and see who writes back.
• A request for anything. Money, photos, a phone number. If it would feel odd from a stranger on the street, it is odd in a letter too.

Where to send letters to strangers online

Each of these does the job in a different shape. The full comparison is here; this is the quick version.

• Slowly (iPhone, Android, web). Letters to pen pals you choose by interest, delivered with a delay based on distance. Best for long correspondence.
• Bottled (iPhone, Android). Your message drifts to a random person, who can keep it and start chatting or release it to someone else.
• Spillr's Scrolls (iPhone only). One letter a day to one stranger chosen at random, somewhere in the world, with no handle, photo or profile attached. They can reply once within seven days. If you both say yes, it opens into a chat.
• Postcrossing (website). Real paper postcards to random members around the world, and one comes back to you for each one that arrives.
• r/penpals (Reddit). Post an introduction and see who writes. Adults only under its current rules.

If you want a correspondence that runs for months, Slowly is the strongest. If the appeal is one honest letter to someone you would never otherwise meet, with no profile for them to judge first, that is what Scrolls were made for. If you want paper, Postcrossing.

Letters to strangers who need them

Some of the most rewarding letters are ones you write without expecting anything back. A few long-running groups organise exactly that:

• The World Needs More Love Letters posts the stories of people going through a hard time, nominated by someone who loves them. You write a letter, and it goes out in a bundle with hundreds of others.
• Letters Against Isolation and Love for Our Elders collect friendly handwritten letters for older people, many of them living in care homes and assisted living.
• Letters to Strangers is a youth-led mental health nonprofit that runs anonymous letter exchanges in a message-in-a-bottle format: your letter goes to someone at random rather than to a fixed pen pal.

Check each group's current guidelines before you write. Most have rules about what to include and where to post it.

When nobody writes back

Some letters will go unanswered. On every platform, a fair share do. It almost never means the letter was bad; people sign up and forget, or open it on a busy day and mean to reply later. The useful way to think about it is that the writing was the point, and a reply is a bonus.

And if writing to strangers turns out to be easy and talking to the people around you is the hard part, that is worth noticing too. The same habits (one specific detail, one true thing, one good question) work in person. How to open up to people picks up from there.