Build a Mad Libs Game in Python

Build a silly story machine

Mad Libs is a word game: you supply words — a noun, a verb, an adjective — without seeing the story, then they get slotted in to make something hilarious. It's a perfect Python project because the whole game is really just collecting words and putting them into a template. You'll practise variables, input() and string formatting, and end up with something genuinely fun to share.

If you've done python input and output, you're ready. Let's build it.

Step 1: collect a word

Each word the player gives is saved in a variable with input():

adjective = input("Give me an adjective: ")
animal = input("Give me an animal: ")

Whatever the player types is stored, ready to drop into the story later.

Step 2: slot words into a story with f-strings

An f-string is a string with the letter f before the opening quote. Anything inside { } is replaced by a variable's value:

story = f"The {adjective} {animal} danced all night long!"
print(story)

If adjective is "sneaky" and animal is "penguin", this prints The sneaky penguin danced all night long! (More on f-strings in working with text and strings.)

Step 3: collect many words without repeating yourself

Asking for ten words with ten input() lines gets repetitive. Instead, keep the prompts in a list and loop:

prompts = ["a name", "an adjective", "a verb", "a place", "a number"]
answers = []

for prompt in prompts:
    word = input(f"Give me {prompt}: ")
    answers.append(word)

Each answer lands in the answers list in order, so answers[0] is the name, answers[1] the adjective, and so on. (See python for loops for how looping works.)

The complete Mad Libs game

Here's the full program. It collects words into named variables, then prints a complete silly story:

print("=== MAD LIBS: A Day at School ===")
print("Answer without reading the story. Trust me — it's funnier!\n")

name = input("Enter a name: ")
adjective1 = input("Enter an adjective: ")
animal = input("Enter an animal: ")
verb = input("Enter a verb (past tense, e.g. 'jumped'): ")
food = input("Enter a food: ")
adjective2 = input("Enter another adjective: ")
number = input("Enter a number: ")

story = f"""
Today {name} brought a {adjective1} {animal} to school.
During lunch it {verb} onto the table and ate {number} plates of {food}.
The teacher said it was the most {adjective2} thing she had ever seen!
"""

print("\n=== YOUR STORY ===")
print(story)

again = input("Play again? (yes/no): ").lower()
if again == "yes":
    print("Run the program again for a brand new tale!")

How it works:

1. Each input() collects one word into a clearly named variable, so it's easy to place correctly.
2. The triple-quoted f"""...""" lets the story span several lines while still slotting in every {variable}.
3. Because the player types fresh words each time, the same template produces a different story every game.

A sample game:

=== MAD LIBS: A Day at School ===
Enter a name: Maya
Enter an adjective: grumpy
Enter an animal: octopus
Enter a verb (past tense, e.g. 'jumped'): sneezed
Enter a food: pancakes
Enter another adjective: sparkly
Enter a number: 99

=== YOUR STORY ===
Today Maya brought a grumpy octopus to school.
During lunch it sneezed onto the table and ate 99 plates of pancakes.
The teacher said it was the most sparkly thing she had ever seen!

Try it yourself

Make your Mad Libs even better:

• Write your own story. Replace the template with a tale of your choice. Add as many {blanks} as you like — just collect a word for each.
• Many stories. Keep two or three templates in a list and use random.choice to pick one, so the structure is a surprise too. See random numbers and games in Python.
• Use the list version. Switch to the prompts list and answers list approach so adding a new blank is just adding to a list.
• Save the funniest. Append finished stories to a file so you can read your best ones later with reading and writing files in Python.