I actually got my act together to submit an entry to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest this year! (Last year, as faithful readers may recall, I forgot about the contest till after the winners were announced.)
The contest challenges entrants to compose a very, very bad opening sentence to an imaginary work of fiction.
Here’s my entry. I did my best to combine food, medicine and bad imagery.
It was sometime during the soup course, an appallingly flocculent vichyssoise populated with a Mexican strain of E. coli that would declare war on his large intestine later that night just after he rolled off his new bride and reached for a cigarette, that Max admitted to himself that his explosive declaration of love for Muriel during cocktails had been the catharsis of his remaining feeling for her, which could only mean that, once again, he had married too quickly.
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest honors the memory of the author who penned that infamous opening line which begins – “It was a dark and stormy night.”
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
– Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
It’s still not too late for you to do some bad sentence writing. Although the contest has an official April 15 deadline, official means nothing to these people, and, according to the contest website, “The actual deadline may be as late as June 30.”
Check the rules and tips before submitting. Read last year’s winning entries for inspiration. Sentences may be any length, but try to keep it short- at most 50-60 words (That’s the hard part, and I failed there…) And if you do submit, post yours and then send me the link and I’ll put it here. Or write your sentence in the comments section.
I dare you. (sung) My writing’s worse than yours…..
Okay, here’s mine:
He looked across the open right hand, happy with the repair he had done of the “spaghetti” wrist of the young man who was distraught over the loss of his fiancee, at me, his assistant, and said “Close the skin, then apply the dressing and splint” before he turned to leave, humming the old Mac Davis tune ‘Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble’.
There was a stain on the carpet, the nature of which she could not tell, and she would not rest until she had exhausted her supply of cleaning products (with the exception of any containing bleach as it might remove the seafoam green hue of the threads) and had done her best to remove any evidence of possible foul play.
-OBS Housekeeper
Damn! You guys are GOOD…I clock you at 62 words, RL, and you, OBS, at 60.
I see I need to hone my editing skills if I’m going to compete with the likes of you two.
Awesome–truly awful! (-:
I have a couple of blog posts I did after 3 beers — can I just link to those?
Generally, she arrives in the office between 6:30 and 7 am, but today was different as she found herself needing to be there at o’dark thirty so she could get a jump on the removal of her personal things and obsessive cleaning of the surfaces of her now stark office with Mr. Clean, Lysol wipes, Windex and Swiffer pads so that she could finally and fully realize the catharsis that was the submission of her resignation late last week.
Ian- 🙂
Schruggling – OBS must be a little teary reading this one…
TBTAM –
Just found your blog, and happy I did. =) In the interest of fun, there is a site I think you’d enjoy: http://bluecentauri.com/tools/writer/sample.php
Plug in your work (and those of others) to get instant analysis. It’s dorkily amusing!
The sentence that ate a paragraph!
I have always wanted to start my work of fiction with:
“And another thing- “