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It was a dark and stormy night, and people across the country were desperately trying to write the worst opening sentence for a novel to win the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Here's what the winner, David McKenzie, 55, came up with:"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."
Read more about the Bulwer-Lytton wretched-writing contest after the jump.
The contest, which began at San Jose State University in 1982, challenges contestants to write the worst possible opening line. The end results, as bad-writing contests tend to be, are hilarious.
Who inspired this literary throwdown? Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, the novelist and author of the recollection "It was a dark and stormy night" that inspired Snoopy to begin many of his works with the same phrase. The Nineteenth-century writer Bulwer-Lytton also coined chestnuts such as "the almighty dollar" and "the pen is mightier than the sword."
In addition to lame bragging rights, the contest winner also receives, in the words of the Web site, "a pittance."
Perhaps the runner-up deserves a kick in the pants for conceiving a run-on like this: "The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor -- the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn't use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride."
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Monday 06 July
By mopsy1
This is amateur stuff compared to the real estate-ese in our Phoenix paper by agents peddling homes. Patio "flaunts" a stunning view. Kitchen is "flattered" by handmade tile. And these are only two isolated examples---paragraph after paragraph of this----strained metaphor after strained metaphor----and one of the most guilty agents I happen to know has a degree in-------English!!
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Monday 06 July
By ktfirefly
The runner-up was marvelous and should have at least tied the first sentence.
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Monday 06 July
By Anna K
my english teacher would freak if she saw these. then she would hunt them down and force them to read english textbooks at gunpoint for a week.
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Monday 06 July
By J
The whole thing about looking for the stranger had an eerie feel to it, kinda like when you're in a strange town and Jeopardy comes on at 7:30 instead of 7..., and it came as a surprise when I finally met him - a rude surprise - like when you get your first surcharge at an ATM that was previously surcharge free, but it was true in the end, he was tall, very tall, as tall as a 6 fott 6 inch tree...
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Monday 06 July
By Ed Van Halen
A british tabloid, "OK Magazine" has got a copy of the autopsy report on Michael Jackson.It states that Jackson had a safety pin in his scrotum
and 2 soldier figures in his anus. I dont think this is normal,is it ?
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Monday 06 July
By Charles
Never end a sentance with a preposition. "Why did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to from?"
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Monday 06 July
By monique
finally, comments that i did not (except for one or two) cringe about or have to wonder about the future of humanity after reading. after most of these i visualize the movie "idiocracy" becoming more of a reality, and it makes my heart cry a bit.
thank you, many of you, for re-establishing my faith in humanity, fun, education, and SPELLING.
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Tuesday 07 July
By Maria
Hmm, well I'm not an English teacher--I'm an editor. Although I wouldn't have used "but" two times in a row, the sentence is not a run-on, and the commas and semis are used properly (although I probably would have used a closing em dash rather than the semi in that situation). So I'm with Cal. On the other hand, I can identify two places in "avid reader's" comment where a comma is used incorrectly, not to mention that the use of "I myself" makes me cringe....
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