Finding words within words makes for a great
creative writing game.

Finding words within words can keep you quite busy. This word exercise flexes your mind and allows you to play a game with yourself to bring on the writing you know is in you.

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The game of Boggle does not serve exactly the purpose of finding words within words, but it does make you think rather hard about all the words that can be found when you shake up the box and mix the letters around. Your mind is forever thinking of words, phrases, and other ideas that you already know, but you need to think outside the box (pun intended), and find all those words that you never even thought were there, but are now coming to the forefront of your mind.

When I was in college, I had a professor who told us about a restaurant called Cleopatra's. The restaurant was going out of business, but new owners were planning on opening their own restaurant in its place. The new owners already had the lighted letters for a sign that read "CLEOPATRA'S." They didn't want to go out and buy new letters, so they decided that they were going to come up with a name for their restaurant that used as many of the same letters of "Cleopatra's" as possible. That way, they would only have to buy one or two letters, if any at all. They renamed the restaurant "Art's Place," which lacked only the "O" from the previous restaurant name.

This is an interesting way to think about words within words. The new owners obviously found use for the apostrophe that was in the old restaurant name, but they didn't necessarily have to. What other words within words can you come up with for a new restaurant or store name in place of Cleopatra's?

Some other examples to try your hand at:

1. Rename a store by the name of "Christmasland" -- the store changes during the rest of the year that isn't the holiday season into different venues, so what are some names you can come up with using the words within words concept?

2. Something's Fishy -- this is a Japanese restaurant in Santa Barbara, California -- what other names can you come up with for it using the same letters?

There are also other ways to look at words within words. How many words can you make out of the following words? Better yet, can you formulate new words out of the letters of the original words that still hold the same definition as the original word? For example, in the word "Rehabilitation," can you take the letters and move them around until you find another word that means the same as "rehabilitation?"

1. Rehabilitation
2. Creativity
3. Antidisestablishmentarianism
4. Serendipitous
5. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Okay, the last one may not be a true word, except for those of us who love Mary Poppins, but it is a word that you have undoubtedly heard used in some context or another. Find the words that stem from these words. They can be in order of the way the word is spelled, or the letters of the word can be mixed around to find even more words within words.

You can even take the names of people you know, or celebrities for that matter, and find words within words in their names, such as adjectives that describe their personalities. Or maybe you'll find words that do not describe them at all, but actually are quite the opposite of whom they are. This can make for interesting writing fodder.

Creative writing games such as this are fulfilling, in that they allow you to think of so many possibilities for words, but they also add to your store of writing ideas. All of the words that you come up with in these types of games can be added to an ever-expanding word list that you are making up to help you, just as your thesaurus or a dictionary might. The more words you find will help you realize all the words you never even considered useful for your own writing purposes. This type of activity expands your mind and employs analytical thinking, as you consider all the possibilities for words that truly do exist.

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