Congratulations! You received a reply from your pen pal! Now I’ll show you some tips for what to write in your successive mails.

Have a good balance between general topics and topics that only you can write about.

Examples of the easiest subjects to talk about are about your school/work, the place you live in, your family, weather, your country’s culture, movies and music. However, when I say “the easiest subjects”, it also means that these subjects can be written by many other people, not just you. These subjects are good for an icebreaker or when you want to start a new kind of topic. But if you have something that are specific to you and your pen pal - for example, a hobby common to both of you, artists that you both like, your unique values etc. , then your pen pal will be more interested in you and you won’t run out of topics. If you keep writing only general subjects, chances are that both you and your pen pal feel the correspondence boring sooner or later. (If you don’t get this, here’s the question: what distinguishes your true friends and general friends, classmates, neighbours etc.? One of the reasons is probably that you have more in common, and you can talk about something to your true friends that you can’t to other people. Friendship on a mail is much the same.)

Ask a few questions.

As I described in the first mail, asking a few questions each time do a lot of benefits to both of you; on your side, you can know about your pen pal better and may be able to find more things you both have in common. On your pen pal’s side, he will know that you are interested in him. He also has something to write about - the answer to your questions. This is good because sometimes he might not have many things to write about because he was too busy with work and did not do anything very interesting. Even for such a time, he can write something that you care about. As for the number of questions, that it depends on the balance between you and your pen pal. For example, if your pen pal writes a long letter, filling a few pages only with the answers to questions and does not bring any new topics, chances are that she is burdened with too many questions, so keep the count down. On the other hand if you are both writing only about what happened in your life etc. and has little interaction with each other, it’s time to ask more questions.

On the other hand, if your pen pal asks you some questions and you can’t answer them or don’t know the answer, at least tell your pen pal that you’ve read the question. It’s much better on your pen pal’s side because he’ll understand that his question was not ignored, and that you did read your pen pal’s mail, not just glimpsed it. If your pen pal is sensible enough, your pen pal won’t be angry for that. However, for example, if you are exchanging mails because you are interested in each other’s country and you don’t know absolutely anything about your own country, your correspondence won’t last that long. In this case, I would recommend consulting the Internet or books about your pen pal’s quesitons. This way you will be more knowledgeable about your country, so it’ll be beneficial to both of you.

Save copies of your mails.

In case of e-mails, this is easy as long as you don’t forget to turn on the “Save copies to the ‘Sent Items’ folder” option. In case of letters, you can either hard-copy your letter, or you can write a draft before you write it on a letterpad. This is especially recommendable for ESL people or people who write in any language that is not your mother tongue, since you can check your spelling, grammar etc. before you write real letters. By saving copies of what you wrote, you can check later if you write about the same topic to the same pen pal in the past.

For those who write in a language that is not your mother tongue:

Do not worry too much about your language skills.

Your language skills will improve as you write mails, and your pen pal will understand what you mean even if you don’t write in perfect grammar.

Just like writing profiles, the best way to improve your letter writing skill is to learn from other pen-pallers. If any of your pen pals write impressive mails, read them many times to see how they start new topics, what kind of questions they ask, what type of expressions they use etc. As you translate them into your own words, you will be able to establish your own style. I have been learning about letter writing this way, too. :)