Bulwer-Lytton Awards

[Mugwump]

it's that time again. The 2014 awards have been announced for the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which began at San Jose State University in 1982. The contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels and takes its name from the Victorian novelist George Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who began his Paul Clifford (1830) with ?It was a dark and stormy night.? Although Lytton did not originate the line, he exploited its familiarity to begin his novel, as have several other writers who followed him. Some of this year's winners that I liked, in no particular order:


"Pet detective Drake Leghorn ducked reporters at the entrance to the small hobby farm and headed down to the tiny pond where a lone goose was frantically calling for her mate and he wondered why ? when so many come to look upon the graceful mating pair ? why would someone want to take a gander?" ? Howie McLennon, Ottawa, ON, Canada


"He was a stolid man, prone to excessive and extended bursts of emotionlessness; but when Maurice loved, he loved with the passion of a dog itching its face against the grain of a firm pile carpet." ? Stephen Sanford, Seattle, WA


"Cole kissed Anastasia, not in a lingering manner as a connoisseur might sip a glass of ?82 La Pin, but open-mouthed and desperate, like a hobo wrapping his mouth around a bottle of Strawberry Ripple in the alley behind the 7-11." ? Terri Meeker, Nixa, MO


"The tears of her loneliness rolled from her cheeks and fell upon the steaming pavement outside a second-rate shopping center in Torrance, California, those tears quickly evaporating in the heat and turning into molecularized water vapor that was gradually pulled into the upper atmosphere and slowly dispersed across the planet until, many years later, a few of the molecules descended upon Riomaggiore, Italy, where they were inhaled by her soul-mate, Giorgio Abatangelo whom she would never, ever, meet." ? Michael Shaw, Rockville, MD


"Six months old, and already their love had picked up memories like lint, which, now that Maddie thought about it, was appropriate, since she and Brian met at the laundromat, when Maddie found herself hampered by a stubborn washing machine coin slot, but then snickered at the thought of being ?hampered? while doing laundry, and then found herself explaining her snicker to the nearest laundromat patron, who turned out to be Brian and who, better yet, turned out to have a sense of humor even, well, dryer than her own." ? Kirsten Wilson, Superior, CO


"It was cool but muggy ? I was schvitzing like a mohel at his first bris ? and one thing was for certain: that Rosetta Stone course in Yiddish was worth the gelt." ? Kelben Graf, Milwaukie, OR


"Gerald Raisonette, whose perhaps foreseeable fate it was to be pelted by candies of a similar name throughout his childhood, eventually avoiding the cinema entirely, claimed towards the end of his life that he had taken a photograph of his soul, which appeared in fact to resemble a dried grape, but there were of course doubters and the expected snickers." - Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island, WA


"The crudo was delicious, the table perfectly diapered, and the ma?tre d? as servile in his bobbing attentions as those birds that eat bugs off the backs of elephants in nature documentaries." - Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island, WA

More here: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2014win.html

[Mugwump]

[LizStreithorst]

This is my favorite:

"The crudo was delicious, the table perfectly diapered, and the ma?tre d? as servile in his bobbing attentions as those birds that eat bugs off the backs of elephants in nature documentaries." - Elizabeth (Betsy) Dorfman, Bainbridge Island, WA


This is my second favorite:

"He was a stolid man, prone to excessive and extended bursts of emotionlessness; but when Maurice loved, he loved with the passion of a dog itching its face against the grain of a firm pile carpet." ? Stephen Sanford, Seattle, WA

[PaulineMi]

Those were so clever.  I liked this one best:

"The tears of her loneliness rolled from her cheeks and fell upon the steaming pavement outside a second-rate shopping center in Torrance, California, those tears quickly evaporating in the heat and turning into molecularized water vapor that was gradually pulled into the upper atmosphere and slowly dispersed across the planet until, many years later, a few of the molecules descended upon Riomaggiore, Italy, where they were inhaled by her soul-mate, Giorgio Abatangelo whom she would never, ever, meet." ? Michael Shaw, Rockville, MD

[Ron Sower]

This one, with all its puns intended, has to be my favorite! But, of course, you guys probably figured that one out...!  Plus, it's a great run-on sentence! I'll bet that Maddie actually realized later that she had left a partially eaten Snickers bar in one of her pockets and it went through the wash and dryer too. It makes me snicker just to think about it.

"Six months old, and already their love had picked up memories like lint, which, now that Maddie thought about it, was appropriate, since she and Brian met at the laundromat, when Maddie found herself hampered by a stubborn washing machine coin slot, but then snickered at the thought of being ?hampered? while doing laundry, and then found herself explaining her snicker to the nearest laundromat patron, who turned out to be Brian and who, better yet, turned out to have a sense of humor even, well, dryer than her own." ? Kirsten Wilson, Superior, CO