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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1779
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I have a question regarding the art of letter writing.

I believe in the old-fashioned way of maintaining pen friendships (not necessarily a relationship, but could be) through hand-written letters, sent to people I have not met. This is something that used to be popular before online dating came and killed it.

The thing is, while writing letters (not emails), I often find that I end up talking about my life in a boring mundane way. Sometimes to compensate for that, I will try to make a story out of it and it comes off as overly compensating.

I understand that this highlights poor writing skills. But what are some themes I can talk about to make an ordinary account interesting? My problem is that an ordinary daily account, converted to writing, ends up as a bunch of personal opinions, biases and philosophies of life which are of no interest to anyone.

What I want is a letter that shows emotional depth and connects rather than intellectualises.

Also, when someone writes such a mundane letter, how would you respond in an interesting way? For example, if someone wrote this:

> Yeah, I was supposed to go there on Wednesday, but my flight got cancelled. Now I will fly on Saturday.

How can you construct a story response to this?

Original score: 6