Reverse the Verse: A Game of Opposites
I love words. But I am a bit if a "word rule" anarchists. And as such, I play writing games so weird, even your thesaurus will be confused.
This post was originally featured on my Creative Genesis blog. The Antonym Game and Synonym Game are regulars in my Writers’ Workshop. I could talk about how great they are for improving vocabulary, developing linguistic flexibility, and all that…stuff—but honestly? The kids just love to play. Need I say more?
So take a read, see what you think—and maybe even give it a try.
I love words. But I love breaking their rules even more.
This week in Writers’ Workshop, we played the Surrealist Antonym Game—a simple wordplay challenge that turned everyday sentences into something completely unexpected.
It started with a basic sentence:
"The cat sat on the roof."
By the time we finished, it had transformed into:
"A dream sang above the ocean."
And along the way? The kids discovered something important: language isn’t just about following rules—it’s about playing with possibilities.
The Game (And How It Got Weird Fast)
The idea is simple: Take a sentence and flip every word into its opposite—or the closest antonym you can find.
The kids took this challenge and ran with it. What started as small changes—cat → mouse, sat → stood, roof → floorboards—quickly spiraled into the bizarre, the surreal, and the downright hilarious.
Here’s one student’s version:
”The invincible knight silently rode his black horse across the battlefield, the snow slowly melting beneath the weight of their heavy steps.“
Here’s another’s:
“A brawny star whispered patiently when it saw the good girl with wings and a stinger, as a galaxy went stagnant with the suns going rotten.”
And one that had me in stitches:
"Zee small and weak internet gave the impatient scorpion man, zee nuclear fission reactor, az zee moons grew up."
(I’ve played this game with adults. They swap “a” with “the” and call it a day. But these kids? They turned grammar inside out.)
And the best part? The more they played, the more they started using the thesaurus, questioning word meanings, and debating what “opposites” even are.
At first, this was just a game. But by the end of the week, I noticed something:
Kids who rarely used a thesaurus? Now, they were flipping through one for fun.
Students were debating nuances of words—Is “mortal” really the opposite of “invincible”? Does “silent” only become “loud”?
They weren’t just writing better sentences or creating strange and wonderful writing prompts—they were thinking more deeply about words. They were playing with meaning.
Try It at Home (Or in Your Own Writing!)
Want to try the Surrealist Antonym Game? Here’s how:
Start with a simple sentence. (Example: The cat sat on the roof.)
Flip every word to its antonym—or something close. (A mouse stood under the floorboards.)
Repeat the process five times without reusing words.
Use the final sentence as a prompt for a poem, a story, or even just a wild thought experiment.
Or… want to take the chaos to another level?
Try The Synonym Game—one of my personal favorites. If you think synonyms are straightforward, this game will prove otherwise. See it in action here!
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The rules? The same as before—but instead of swapping words for opposites, you replace each one with a synonym or something close.
It sounds simple. But here’s the twist: synonyms aren’t exact. They vary in degree, nuance, and tone—which means by the end, your sentence will be hilariously, wonderfully, unpredictably off-track.
For example, take The cat sat on the roof:
The feline perched atop the terrace.
The predator lounged beyond the platform.
The beast sprawled above the diving board.
…See where this is going? By the end, your sentence has completely transformed—not through opposites, but through layers of shifting meaning.
It’s a fantastic way to see just how slippery language can be—and to have a lot of fun while doing it.
This game reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: Creativity isn’t just about following structure—it’s about learning how to bend, twist, and stretch ideas.
That’s what makes writing exciting.
And that’s why I love watching kids play with language—not just to follow rules, but to discover what happens when they break them.
Have you ever played with opposites in your writing?
What’s the strangest antonym swap you can come up with?
Drop your weirdest sentence in the comments—I’d love to see what you come up with!