Resources on playing with words
Websites, books and tools
Learn more techniques for playing with your words.
Anagrams
Andy’s anagram solver
Type in your key word or phrase, and this tool will create anagrams from them. Whether you’ll like the anagrams, I can’t say. “Ann Wylie” generated “el yawn in” — not a phrase I’ll be using in my next training brochure!
Internet Anagram Server
Turn a list into a mnemonic device to help readers remember your key points. Create a meaningful acronym from the first letters of the words in your list with this online anagram server.
Oxymorons
Myspace Funny Oxymoron Generator
Get inspiration with this push-button generator. See contradictions in terms like “working vacation,” “political science” and “airline food.”
Serendipitous Oxymoron Maker
Practice creating your own paradoxes. Choose from a small list of positive adjectives with negative nouns (“beautiful disaster”) and negative adjectives with positive nouns (“miserable honesty”).
Word coiners
Verbotomy
Practice coining new words.
Play With Your Words
Cut through the clutter of competing messages
There's a little piece of your brain — it's called the Broca's area — that's responsible for helping you sort through all of the many messages you get each day.
Well-worn phrases and familiar ideas don't activate the Broca's area. Plain old 'splainin' doesn't do anything for it either. But creative techniques like wordplay do.
At Master the Art of the Storyteller — our two-day hands-on creative-writing master class on July 25-26 in Portland — you’ll learn how to tickle your readers' Broca's area — and cut through the clutter of competing messages — with wordplay. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:
- Go beyond twist of phrase: Learn to flip phrases; compress details; sub soundalikes; list, rhyme and twist — even coin new words.
- Find online tools that do most of the work for you: Walk away with links to some of the best (free!) wordplay resources — as well as ideas for how to use them.
- Polish your skills in our wordplay workout: Get “recipes” for creating 14 types of wordplay, from anagram to etymology to oxymoron.
Learn more about our
Portland master class.
