We saw an excellent question appear on the r/swingdancing subreddit today and we think it’s worth chatting about. First, these types of questions appear a lot - I do such-and-such role and I feel boring or I feel that I’m not entertaining enough for my partners. We get it, we’ve been there, we’ve received help over the years so let’s talk about what kind of “games” you can add to your lead role (or even follow role) repertoire:

switch hand combinations. Most passbys and swingouts start into L2R from the leader's perspective. Why not do it L2L, R2R, R2L, crossed hands, etc?

switch hand combinations. Most passbys and swingouts start into L2R from the leader's perspective. Why not do it L2L, R2R, R2L, crossed hands, etc? We received this one from Jeanne DeGeyter in Tulsa when she was providing West Coast Swing coaching to me. It really opened up my mind when she sat me in front of competition video tape and went “passby, tuck turn, passby, whip, sugar tuck - labeling what I thought were fancy patterns to their most basic elements. It’s amazing how much you can dress up a pattern by choosing a different connection.
Play with the rotation. A swingout normally goes clockwise. What about anti-clockwise? What about over-rotated? What about under-rotated? What if everything you did circled clockwise? Subvert expectations of what is "prescribed as best practices." Peter Strom once had us a play a game of constantly circling clockwise no matter what patterns we were initiating. Tremendous fun!
Before the follower gets a turn you have to insert one of your own. Or after. Maybe you do two! My wife got tired of me expressing my dance through turns so she’s introduced the “every time I turn, you turn twice” to reduce that practice on the social floor.
Random (insert jazz step): big kick, kick ball change, switches. Just try it.
Make a sound: slap, clap, snap, tap are all ideas. Classic from Casey Koroshec and Michael Faltesek. Let’s make some noise together!
Repeat a rhythm: the double kick in side-by-side charleston, the walk walk in a circle, two turns for your standard tuck turn, multiple switches/suzy Q's. Again, we often fall into these prescribed rhythm patterns where we execute the start and finish within the counts we learned. Keep repeating and see where you end up.

Hope this helps and happy dancing!