How to make your own Mad Libs for birthdays, weddings and parties

A store-bought Mad Lib is funny. A Mad Lib about your best friend, read out at their birthday, is the thing everyone talks about for a week. Making your own is easier than it sounds: you need a short story, a few blanks and about twenty minutes. Here's how.

The quick version

1. Write a short, normal story about the person or the occasion. Five to ten sentences.
2. Swap the important words for word types: (Adjective), (Plural noun), (Verb ending in -ing), (Food).
3. Play it once yourself to check it works.
4. Share it: read it out at the party, or publish it on Fun Libs so everyone can play on their own phone.

On Fun Libs you write blanks in brackets, like (Adjective), and the story editor turns them into prompts automatically. If you want a head start, Write with AI writes a first draft from a one-line idea; see our guide to AI-generated Mad Libs.

For a deeper look at writing blanks that land, read how to write a fill-in-the-blank story.

A Mad Libs template you can copy

Fill in the plain parts with details about your person, and leave the brackets as blanks:

Everyone knows that (Name of the guest of honor) is the most (Adjective) person in (Place). Every morning, they wake up, eat a bowl of (Plural noun) and (Verb) for (Number) minutes. Their friends love them because they are always (Verb ending in -ing), even when it's (Adjective). Today, we celebrate them with a cake shaped like a (Noun), and we all shout "(Exclamation)!"

Birthday Mad Libs

Birthdays are the easiest place to start, because everyone in the room knows the birthday person. Write about:

• Their morning routine, made heroic
• "A day in the life" at their job
• Their biography, from birth to today, one sentence per decade
• A news report about the party itself

Use a numbered blank like (Name 1) for the birthday person's nickname, so the same silly word comes back again and again.

Wedding and bridal shower Mad Libs

Wedding Mad Libs are a classic icebreaker at bridal showers, hen and stag parties and receptions. Good formats:

• How they met: the true story, with blanks in all the important places
• The proposal: retold as a dramatic movie scene
• Marriage advice cards: "Always remember to (Verb) your spouse before (Verb ending in -ing)."
• The vows: keep this one for the after-party

Couples can play these together on date night too. Our romance stories and the Romantic Pack are full of ideas.

Baby shower Mad Libs

Write the baby's first letter to their parents, a "job description" for the new parents, or a forecast of the baby's first year. Keep them short; baby shower guests usually play several games in a row.

Retirement and going-away party Mad Libs

Retell the person's career as an epic adventure, or write their last day at the office as a news story. Fill it with details only the team knows: the coffee machine, the meeting that never ends, the plant nobody waters.

Office and team-building Mad Libs

Mad Libs make a great icebreaker for meetings and team events because they take two minutes and nobody needs to be good at anything. Write one about the team's week, the quarterly results or the office party, and play it at the start of the meeting.

Sharing your Mad Lib

• At the party: one person holds the phone and asks the room for words. Or use party mode, where the phone is passed around and each guest's words are highlighted in their own color.
• Before the party: publish the story and send the link to the group chat. Everyone plays it on their own phone, and you compare results.
• Printed: if you want paper copies, see our free printable Mad Libs.

On the day they met, Sam was holding a haunted umbrella and Priya was yodelling at a pigeon. It was love at first sandwich.

Open the editor and make your first one.

Mad Libs is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Fun Libs is an independent game and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Mad Libs or Penguin Random House.