The Power of Mad Libs

Tell them what to write without telling them what to write.

By Allison K Williams

You’ve seen it if you’ve written for the Brevity Blog and I was your editor. Or if I’ve ever live-edited your work in a workshop, or if I’ve been lucky enough to work with you as a client: Mad Libs.

Remember that fill-in-the-blanks game we played at parties and in the car? A flip-pad of short “stories” missing key words. Blank lines labeled “adjective,” “noun,” and “adverb” cued the leader to ask the group for words to fill in (and taught us all the parts of speech). After the list of words was written in, the text was read aloud, the inappropriateness of most words inspiring general hilarity. Invented by Leonard Stern and Roger Price, the game is still played in cars, at camp, and at very dorky parties. The books now even include pages with word lists before the stories, so you can play Mad Libs solo (for those of us too dorky even for dork parties).

But Mad Libs have a greater power for writers: by making our own blanks, we skip the potholes of agonizing over words or letting our muse vanish down an internet-research rabbit hole.

Don’t run to the internet to check the weather for that chapter opening. Just type NEED WEATHER JAN 14 1968 and keep going with the story. Don’t worry about your memory vs. your mom’s—write your version of what happened and add GET MOM’S POV AND USE JUXTAPOSITION OF KITCHEN KNIVES TO CONNECT TIMELINES. Come back later, when you’re in a research phase instead of a writing phase, and fill in what you skipped, instead of breaking your creative flow by digging out the photo albums or worrying you’ve mischaracterized a living relative.  

For writers creating rapidly for copywriting purposes, to meet an assigned deadline, or to churn out quality genre fiction as fast as readers can click Kindle Unlimited, Mad Libs is plotting on a supreme scale. Where your outline might follow the Hero’s Journey or Save The Cat!, your Mad Libs can usher you through your plot moment by moment:

HERO CONFRONTS VILLAIN IN SIGNIFICANT LOCATION, VILLAIN REVEALS SECRET THAT CONNECTS THEM.

Subsequent books can translate that Mad Libs moment to “Luke, I am your father” in the Cloud City’s central airshaft or Dani Shapiro in her office, confronting her DNA report showing she’s not her father’s biological daughter.

For editors, creating Mad Libs blanks for your author to fill in allows very prescriptive editing without telling them what to write. You get to point out very specifically what’s missing on the page; the author decides how to fill the hole. Instead of spending precious time worrying how to ask the exact right question that gets the author to write what you know the story needs, without hurting their feelings or sounding dictatorial, give them a Mad Libs. I type it in the document itself, not in the comments, with the combination of colored text and all caps standing out as not their words.

TRANSITION OUT OF PERSONAL ANECDOTE BACK TO MAIN POINT

WEAVE BACK IN TWO PERSONAL APPEARANCE DETAILS HERE PULL STUFF FROM DELETED FIRST PARAGRAPH

BALANCE TRAUMATIC SCENE BY ADDING A NICE MOM MOMENT HERE SHE BAKED COOKIES OR BUTTONED YOUR COAT OR WHATEVER

(Authors I’ve worked with, feel free to push back in the comments if you actually hate this and find it stifles your creativity!)

Questions and comments still have their place, of course. Sometimes the process of thinking through an answer or responding to confusion is what the writer needs. But for work that needs to be done quickly—or parts of a manuscript that can be done quickly in the context of a long, difficult revision—it can be a relief to just follow instructions. Paradoxically, the more specific the instructions, the easier it is for the writer to interpret and fill in the “blank” in their own unique way. Often, the instinctive reaction of “No, I don’t need to write that—I need to write this other thing!” is itself a powerful burst of creativity. Pushing back and being pushed forward both bring us closer to the words we need to write.

I use Mad Libs for writing copy, for editing other people’s books, for writing my own articles. I even use it for Brevity blogs, which I generally write in an hour. The simpler and more obvious the blanks, the better the springboard to unique, inspired writing. And I think you’ll enjoy it, too. Use Mad Libs to vault over research, to point out what your fellow writer needs without telling them what to write, to crank out copy over and over again. I’ll be (present-tense verb) you from (place), waiting to see what you (verb).

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Allison K Williams is Brevity’s Social Media Editor and the editor of books published by Penguin Random House, Mantle, Knopf, Hachette and many more. Not completely appalled by her editing style? Find out about Project Novel, an MFA year crammed into eight weeks. Or just join the mailing list.