Stop Posting Vague Missed Connections That Nobody Recognises

Include the price of your pint and the exact bus stop if you actually want them to email you back.

Most people writing on Just Once are terrified of looking like a weirdo. I understand the impulse. You want to sound like a poet or a character in a film that wins a prize at Cannes. You think that by describing the way the air felt or the way your hearts almost touched, you are being romantic. You are actually being useless. If I see a post about a girl with a 'kind face' and 'good energy' at a station, I assume it could be any of the three million women in London. I stop reading.

Specificity is the only thing that works. I do not care if you think they were your soulmate. I care if they were wearing a battered pair of Adidas Sambas with a green tongue and eating a lukewarm Greggs sausage roll. If you can't remember what they looked like, remember what they were doing. People recognise their habits and their mistakes far quicker than they recognise a generic compliment about their eyes.

The power of the ugly detail

Stop trying to make the encounter sound perfect. The best missed connections are the ones that mention something slightly embarrassing or mundane. If you spilled half a latte down your front and they handed you a scratchy blue paper towel, put that in the title. If they were arguing with a self-checkout machine about the weight of a bag of onions, lead with the onions. We spend our lives trying to look cool, but we only really notice each other when the mask slips.

I once saw a post that spent four paragraphs describing a man's 'rugged profile' on the 55 bus to Hackney. Nobody replied. Two days later, someone else posted about a man on the same bus who was struggling to fold a damp IKEA bag while holding a cactus. He replied within three hours. The cactus was the hook. Nobody identifies as a 'rugged profile', but everyone knows when they are the person who nearly stabbed a passenger with a succulent.

Name the brand and the price

Generic nouns are the enemy of a successful search. Don't say you saw them at a pub in Birmingham. Say you saw them at The Wellington on Bennetts Hill and they were drinking a pint of Purity that cost six quid. Mention the book they were reading, especially if it had a bright orange Penguin Spine or a coffee stain on the cover. These details act as anchors. They prove you were actually there and you were actually looking.

One user, Sarah, sent me this example of what she almost posted before I told her to fix it:

"We shared a look in the cereal aisle. You were tall and wearing a dark coat. I was the girl in the scarf. I felt something special when we bumped trolleys. Please get in touch if you see this."

That is a disaster. There are four thousand tall men in dark coats in every Tesco at any given moment. I made her change it to mention the fact that he had three boxes of Shredded Wheat and was wearing a bright yellow beanie with a hole in the top. He found the post because his flatmate saw it and took the mickey out of him for the Shredded Wheat.

What to include in your draft

Before you hit publish on Just Once, check your draft against this list. If you have fewer than three of these, start again. You are wasting your time and mine.

• The exact time of day, not just 'evening' or 'rush hour'.
• A specific item of clothing that isn't a 'black jacket'.
• One piece of overheard dialogue, even if it was just them saying "sorry" to a ticket barrier.
• The brand of the headphones they were wearing or the phone case they had.
• Any physical quirk, like a heavy silver ring or a habit of biting their lip.

Avoid the poetic trap

You are not writing a novel. You are writing a digital 'Lost and Found' flyer. If you use the word 'soul' or 'destiny', I will personally come to your house and delete your browser history. People respond to posts that make them feel seen, not posts that make them feel like a prop in your internal monologue. The moment you start describing the 'atmosphere' of the room, you have lost the plot. The atmosphere was probably just the smell of stale floor cleaner and damp coats.

Be blunt about why you didn't speak to them. It is fine to say you were too chicken or that your stop came up too fast. Honesty is less creepy than a scripted romantic encounter. Tell them you liked their laugh or the way they looked annoyed at their Kindle. It makes you sound like a human being rather than a stalker who has spent too much time watching romantic comedies from the nineties.

The geography of the encounter

If you were at a gig, don't just name the band. Mention that you were standing by the sound desk or near the bar where the floor was particularly sticky. If you were on a train, mention the carriage number or the fact that the air conditioning was broken. These environmental complaints are the glue of British social interaction. We bond over things going wrong.

I saw a brilliant post recently about a pair who both got stuck in the revolving doors at a hotel in Manchester. They didn't talk, but the poster mentioned the specific sound the door made when it jammed. It was a mechanical squeak like a dying seagull. That is the kind of detail that sticks. It is unique. It is real. It is better than a thousand words about how your eyes met across a crowded lobby.

Go back to your draft. Delete the adjectives. Add the name of the crisp flavour they were eating. Post it now.