Words have rhythm, texture, personality. They can whisper or thunder, stretch like melted cheese or snap like a twig beneath the misstep of a clumsy ninja apprentice. Sometimes, words just want to play.

Some writers wield language like Sweeney Todd, slicing through ambiguity with precision. Others treat it like a border collie on an agility course, leaping from syllable to syllable, twisting and tumbling until words land in unexpected places.

Take alliteration. Vladimir Nabokov famously begins Lolita with an invocation of sound:

“Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.”

There’s something delightful about the way the syllables sing in that sentence. Inspired by that playfulness, I once wrote an article about the human hand, calling it “the adroit acrobat of anthropic anatomy” and describing its “flexible fingers that flutter with finesse in fantastic feats of dexterity.”

Is it too much alliteration? Maybe. But does it make the reader feel something different than a straightforward description of the hand? Absolutely.

Then there are puns. Oscar Wilde once quipped,

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

Shakespeare wove puns into Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and Romeo and Juliet, making them both tragic and comedic devices.

Wordplay is the beginning of cleverness but also a tool of subversion. It makes a reader pause, laugh, or see something from a new angle. It lightens dark subjects, sharpens satire, and makes prose more alive.

In my own writing, I use wordplay sparingly, strategically. I try not to overdo it, but I want each page to contain something surprising amid straightforward prose—something that grabs the reader’s attention.

Try playing with assonance. Insert double entendres. Invent portmanteau words like blunderstand (to completely misinterpret something in an embarrassingly obvious way) and procrastibaking (to bake as a means of avoiding responsibilities).

Shakespeare, Nabokov, and Wilde knew that language is elastic. It bends, stretches, and reshapes itself to fit meaning—but only when a writer dares to play. Have fun!