Fill-in-the-Blank Stories: Play, Print & Make Your Own

What is a fill-in-the-blank story?

A fill-in-the-blank story is a word game for two or more people, or for one person and a random word button. One player holds a short story with some of its words missing. Without showing the story, that player asks for words of a certain kind: a noun, an adjective, an animal, a silly name. The words go into the blanks in the order they were given, and then the story is read out loud. Because nobody knew what the words were for, the result is usually ridiculous, and that is the whole point.

If you have played Mad Libs®, you already know how it works: these are stories in that style, written by us. There are 274 original stories here, each with 11 to 16 blanks, for kids, classrooms, parties, holidays, weddings, baby showers and the office. You can play on a phone, print worksheets, or write a story of your own and send it to friends.

How to play

1. Pick a story. Start with Today’s story, tap Surprise me, search by title, or narrow the list with the occasion menu and the buttons for kids, adults, school, party and more.
2. Give the words. The game asks for one word at a time, tells you what kind of word it needs and shows a few examples. Type a word and press Next word. If nothing comes to mind, Suggest a word picks one that fits. Prefer to see every blank at once? Switch to All at once.
3. Reveal the story. Tap Reveal my story and read it aloud, or let the browser do it with Read it to me. The words you gave are highlighted.
4. Share or play again. Copy the story as text, as a link that opens your finished story, or as a picture. New random words fills the same story again, and Another story takes you back to the list.

In a hurry? Instant random story fills every blank with a random word and shows the result in one tap, and Fill the rest randomly finishes a story you have started.

Playing with a group

The game is at its best out loud. One person holds the phone and reads each request to the room: “Give me a plural noun.” The others shout answers and the reader types the first or the funniest one. Tap Playing with friends? and enter the players’ names, and each request is addressed to the next person in turn, so quiet players get asked too.

• At a party or a shower: pick a story about the guest of honor’s occasion, ask the room for words, and have the guest of honor read the result.
• In the car: the passenger reads the requests, everyone else answers. No pens, nothing to drop under the seat.
• On a video call: share the screen after the words are in, not before, so nobody sees the story early.
• On paper: print the worksheets (see below), hand them out in pairs, and let each pair read theirs to the group.

What kind of word goes in each blank?

Every blank is labeled with the kind of word it needs. This table explains the labels you will meet most often, with examples. There are no wrong answers as long as the word is the right kind; unexpected words make the best stories.

Two labels cause most of the mix-ups. A verb in the past tense is an action that already happened (jumped, sang, swam), while a verb ending in -ing is one that is still going on (jumping, singing). And an adverb describes how something is done (quickly, loudly), while an adjective describes a thing (quick, loud). The word suggester always returns the right form, including irregular ones such as swim and swam, and it avoids using the same word twice in one story.

All 274 stories, by occasion

Every story is original, clean and written to be read aloud. Each heading below links straight to that shelf in the game. The number after a title is how many words the story needs.

Fill-in-the-blank stories for kids

There are 157 stories for kids: school days, pets, dinosaurs, space, fairy tales, sports and family life. The vocabulary is everyday English, the sentences are short, and the humor comes from the words the children choose. Three stories (All About Me, My Hometown and My Daily Routine) use especially simple language for beginners and English learners.

Fill-in-the-blank stories for adults

The 86 stories for adults are about grown-up life: the office, moving, taxes, in-laws, turning thirty, forty and fifty, assembling a crib at midnight. They are written for adults but stay clean, so they work at an office party, a family dinner or a shower with grandparents in the room. For work events, see also the office and work stories.

Holiday stories: Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving and more

Seasonal stories are the most played ones. There are 19 Christmas stories (a letter to Santa, the office party, wrapping presents at midnight), 13 Halloween stories (trick-or-treating, a haunted hayride, monster school) and 10 Thanksgiving stories (the kids’ table, Friendsgiving, a toast), plus stories for Hanukkah, New Year, Valentine’s Day, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, the Fourth of July, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. A printed stack of them keeps a holiday table busy between courses.

Stories for weddings, baby showers and birthdays

Fill-in-the-blank stories are a classic shower and reception game because every guest can take part and the result is about the people being celebrated. Use the wedding stories (vows, a maid-of-honor speech, the first dance), the baby shower stories (advice for the new parents, predictions for the baby) or the birthday stories (party invitations, a toast, a wish list). For a personal touch, write your own story about the couple or the birthday person: how they met, their habits, the trip everyone still talks about.

Printable fill-in-the-blank stories

Every story prints as a one-page worksheet. Tap Print worksheet while a story is open, or tap Print several in the story list, choose up to twelve stories, and print them in one go, each on its own page. In the print dialog you can also choose “Save as PDF”.

• The top half lists the words to collect, numbered, with a line for each.
• A fold line hides the story while the words are being collected.
• The bottom half is the story with numbered gaps to copy the words into.
• A short reminder of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs sits at the foot of the page.

You can print a finished story too: reveal it and tap Print to get the story with your words underlined, ready for the fridge door or a scrapbook.

Make your own fill-in-the-blank story

Tap Write your own to open the story maker. Type or paste a short text, select a word, and tap the kind of blank it should become: noun, adjective, place, animal and so on. You can also type any label yourself in square brackets, such as [favorite snack] or [name of a teacher]. The preview underneath shows the story with its blanks as you work, and your draft is kept in your browser.

Short on time? Paste a finished text and tap Add blanks for me. The maker picks suitable nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs, spreads them through the text and turns them into blanks. Check the result and adjust it; Undo brings your text back.

When the story is ready, Play my story starts it, Print worksheet puts it on paper, and Copy a link to it gives you a link that opens your story for anyone. The story travels inside the link itself, so nothing is uploaded.

Tips for writing a good one

• Keep it short. About 100 to 130 words with 12 to 16 blanks is the sweet spot. Longer stories make the word collecting drag.
• Write a real little story first. A beginning, something going wrong, an ending. If the text is funny before any words are removed, it will be funnier after.
• Blank out the words that carry the surprise: what was eaten, who walked in, what was shouted. Leave the small grammar words alone.
• Mix the kinds of blank. A story with ten adjectives is hard to answer. Add an animal, a number, a body part, an exclamation.
• Use verbs that stand on their own. “We [verb past tense] across the room” works with almost any verb; “We [verb past tense] the ball” does not.
• Test it with random words. Tap Instant random story a few times. If a sentence breaks, fix the sentence, not the words.

In the classroom

Teachers use fill-in-the-blank stories to practice parts of speech without a worksheet that feels like one. Students have to know what an adjective or a past-tense verb is to play at all, and they hear at once whether a word fits. Some ideas:

• Warm-up: project a story, collect words from the class one request at a time, and read the result together.
• Pair work: print two different worksheets per pair. Each student collects words from the other, then reads their story aloud.
• Grammar focus: before revealing, sort the collected words on the board by word class, and let the class correct any that landed in the wrong column.
• Writing task: students write their own short story in the maker, turn six to ten words into blanks, and swap links or printouts.
• English learners: the stories for beginners use the present tense and everyday topics, and the examples under each request model the kind of word that is needed.

Sharing a finished story

A good result deserves an audience. Copy link to this story makes a link that opens the story with your words already in it; the person who opens it can then play the same story with their own words. Copy as image and Save image turn the story into a picture for a group chat or a post. Copy story copies the plain text.

Privacy

The game runs in your browser. The words you type, the stories you write and the links you make are not uploaded or stored on our server: a shared story is carried in the link itself, after the # sign, which browsers do not send to websites. Drafts are kept in your own browser only.

Mad Libs® is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Fill-in-the-Blank Stories and all of its stories are made by Linguaholic and are not affiliated with or endorsed by the trademark owner.

Related tools

For more word games, make a puzzle with the Word Search Maker, get drawing-game and charades words from the Random Word Generator, act things out with the Charades Generator, or find words that sound alike with Rhyming Words. For party games on one phone, visit Linguaholic Games.