Fill In the ______

We’ve discovered a fun way to gain useful insights into your own prose. Want to know how many modifiers you use? Curious about how obsessed you might be with anatomical references? This one simple trick can help!

Make a mad lib from a page of your book.

We’re sort of kidding about this serving any real purpose. Sure, if you still have adjectives left over after setting up twenty blanks for them, you’ll want to trim a few. But don’t let anything like that get in the way of the hilarity.

Jen invented this and didn’t tell Kent. We do “real” mad libs all the time, so he didn’t suspect a thing. When she asked for a liquid Kent said “coffee” (which will become important in a moment).

The reveal was pretty priceless, and of course Jen made him read it out loud. It was based on a pivotal, though lighthearted, passage in Miss Brandymoon’s Device, which made it perfect fodder for such irreverent treatment. Remember about “coffee”? Take one guess what type of liquid was in the original text.

A co-author is the ideal playmate for this game, but it could also work among members of a critique group, or with a beta reader. Or a stranger on the bus, if you’re looking for novel ways to make friends.

Give me a verb ending in -ing…