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Python project

Mad Libs story generator

Mad Libs are stories with blanks. You choose the words first, without seeing the story, and the result is usually ridiculous. You'll store your words in a dictionary, drop them into story templates, and let Python pick which story to tell.

Skills you'll practise

  • Strings
  • Dictionaries
  • Lists
  • random.choice
Open starter in playgroundSee the steps

Steps

  1. Step 1: Collect your words

    Store each word in a dictionary, with the kind of word as the key: "animal": "otter". The starter has one blank left for you to fill.

    Show a hint

    Every value should be a string in quotes, and every pair needs a comma after it.

  2. Step 2: Write a story template

    Write a sentence with {adjective}, {animal} and the other keys in curly braces where the blanks go.

    Show a hint

    The names inside the braces must match your dictionary keys exactly, including spaces and capital letters.

  3. Step 3: Fill in the blanks

    Call template.format(**words) to swap every {name} for its word, then print the result.

    Show a hint

    The ** unpacks the dictionary, so format receives adjective="sparkly", animal="otter" and so on.

  4. Step 4: Catch empty words

    Before printing, check whether any word is still an empty string and tell the player which ones to fill in.

    Show a hint

    A list comprehension works well: [name for name, word in words.items() if word.strip() == ""].

  5. Step 5: Add more stories

    Put two or three templates in a list and use random.choice to pick one each time you run it.

Starter code

It already runs. The TODO comments mark where to start.

Open in playground
main.py
import random

# 1. Your words. Change any of them to whatever you like.
words = {
    "adjective": "sparkly",
    "animal": "otter",
    "place": "the library",
    "verb": "juggling",
    "food": "",  # TODO: fill this one in
}

# 2. A story template. Each {name} is a blank.
template = "Yesterday a {adjective} {animal} walked into {place}."

# 3. TODO: fill the blanks with template.format(**words) and print the story.
print(template)

Example solution

One way to finish it. Have a go first; yours doesn't need to match.

Reveal the solution
main.py
import random

words = {
    "adjective": "sparkly",
    "animal": "otter",
    "place": "the library",
    "verb": "juggling",
    "food": "pancakes",
}

templates = [
    "Yesterday a {adjective} {animal} walked into {place} and started {verb}. "
    "Everyone cheered, and then they all shared some {food}.",
    "Breaking news: a {adjective} {animal} has been spotted {verb} near {place}. "
    "Witnesses say it smelled faintly of {food}.",
    "My favourite memory is {verb} with a {adjective} {animal} in {place}, "
    "eating {food} until the sun went down.",
]

missing = [name for name, word in words.items() if word.strip() == ""]

if missing:
    print("Fill in these words first:", ", ".join(missing))
else:
    story = random.choice(templates).format(**words)
    print(story)
Open solution in playground

Stretch goal

Let a friend play: use input() to ask for each word (type the answers in the playground's input box before you press Run), so they choose words without seeing the story.

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