Bulwer-Lytton (Bad) Fiction Finalists
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.
"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)
Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
My entry in the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction writing contest received Dishonorable Mention for Purple Prose:
"The Zinfandel poured pinkly from the bottle, like a stream of urine seven hours after eating a bowl of borscht."
"Wet leaves stuck to the spinning wagon wheels like feathers to a freshly tarred heretic, reminding those who watched them of the endless movement of the leafy earth--or so they would have, if only those fifteenth-century onlookers had believed that the earth actually rotated, which they didn't, which is why it was heretical to say that it did--and which is the reason why the wagon held a freshly tarred heretic in the first place."
--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
My entry in the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction writing contest received Dishonorable Mention for Purple Prose:
"The Zinfandel poured pinkly from the bottle, like a stream of urine seven hours after eating a bowl of borscht."
- Two of my other Bulwer-Lytton entries are included in the book It Was a Dark and Stormy Night II. This entry, I'm proud to say, received "Dishonorable Mention" in the Historical Fiction category:
"Wet leaves stuck to the spinning wagon wheels like feathers to a freshly tarred heretic, reminding those who watched them of the endless movement of the leafy earth--or so they would have, if only those fifteenth-century onlookers had believed that the earth actually rotated, which they didn't, which is why it was heretical to say that it did--and which is the reason why the wagon held a freshly tarred heretic in the first place."