Most of us are familiar with "It was a dark and stormy night" as the stereotypical opening for bad writers. You might think, "It's not that terrible" and you'd be right. However, that sentence is only part of the real sentence, which is a prison sentence for the reader:
"It was a dark and stormy night and 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."
Those words were penned (oops, another prison reference) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. It is typical of his writing, as well as typical of the writing of the day (probably because authors were paid by the word).
Believing that such stately prose should not go unhonored, Professor Scott Rice from the English Department at San Jose State University sponsors an annual contest in which the goal is to write the opening sentence to the worst possible novel.
Select the link "Take Me Out To The Bulwer Game" to find out more about the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Then come on back.
These two won "Honorable Mention" awards and were published in separate contest books:
"The train passed by here," said the Indian scout, a tall, well-muscled Souix with a dark red, weathered face, hawk-like eyes, and a history of gastronomic troubles, who paused to further study the ground at his feet (land which would someday be part of the state of North Dakota), ". . . and it travelled recently, for I can see its tracks."
The sun rose slowly, like a fiery furball coughed up uneasily onto a sky-blue carpet by a giant unseen cat.
This one was published in one of the books:
To fully appreciate this story, it must be read in the nude -- so please, bare with me.
Here are others I've submitted:
It was a dark, Andstormy night -- as most nights were in Andstormy, Iowa -- made darker by the omnipresent gloom that infested the very air of the farming town known for its high-yield corn production techniques.
It was the sort of day where your dog dies and you don't even notice.
The trapdoor closed, but the quick-moving rodent lost only his rearmost portion to the sharp blade as he scurried away from the doom-laden box -- and therein lies our tail.
"Please, mon cheri, a kiss?" he asked Frenchly.
Claudia smiled knowingly at his overindulgence once again as she asked the stomach-pained cannibal in slang English, "Et two, Brutus?"
"You slut!" she exclaimed tartly.
"Why why why why why?" he whined.
The sun rose quickly, erasing the white stars in their sea of dark indigo, tinting the silver clouds and now turquoise sky with hues of orange and yellow, and the wind blew gently as, under the black branches of the evergreen tree amid the violet lilacs, Jimmy White (the son of a copper) and Sally Graymore of Brownsville, Texas, read the colorful introduction to a Gold Key book about the Bronze Age.
It was the night of the University's spring dance, and the stars shone brightly upon the romantic couple holding hands as they walked in silence towards his castle -- a silence broken when Greta asked, "Are you really interested in the inner me, Dr. Frankenstein?"
Lancelot lay upon the bed, exhausted, as his partner, the smiling Guinevere, remarked, "That's what I call a knight well-spent."
Submitted for your approval . . . two groups of men, not much more than strangers, fighting two separate but equal contests of strength, speed and skill, under artificial luminescence in a stadium of thousands of spectators . . . these men have entered willingly into . . . The Twilight Doubleheader.
Ajax Pinesol, the Mr. Clean of dynamo cowboys, boldly whisked like a comet into Far Corners on Ammonia, his fantastic pale horse, answering solo their S.O.S. to mop up the town by sticking buckets of lead in the rising tide of dirty desparados sponging off its citizens, then, as 409 residents cheered at their fresh start, shouted, "You can ALL stop your ragging now -- I told you I'd handle it!"
A young lady of moralless reknown, who walked the main streets of the town, did often exclaim (and this caused her fame), "I never let anyone down!"
"Mark . . . Mark," she remarked.
I"m taking you to court again!" she retorted.
In the alternate reality of Earth-Q, Bob Brandon was not an underpaid and undersexed insurance underwriter, he was Robert Brandon (code name: SHARK), the government's top secret agent, an expert on pistols, disguises and women -- however, the two never met.
He was kind, generous, forgiving . . . he had a heart of gold, thanks to the crazed cardiological experiments of Dr. Renaldo.
"I'm sorry, Mother, but I'm sure you can understand why Janet is leery about inviting you to her bridal shower," Norman said with bated breath.
Inspector Puche, no stranger to violent death on the hog farms of Nebraska, carefully studied the porcine corpse and surmised, "Farmer Brown, I believe your sow killed herself during the pig-calling contest -- her demise was a soooey-cide."
Madame Petitia, the notorious midget whose phony seances bilked many grieving and gullible widows of thousands of dollars, eluded capture by local authorities (much to the consternation of Sheriff Horace Throte, what with the election just three weeks away) while the newspaper headline screamed, "SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE!"
It was a Duke and stormy night, as Wayne yelled in torrents.
On the island of Nun Atoll, Sister Rambosia, armed with only a half-empty M-16, six smoke grenades, two LAW rockets and a Bowie knife for close combat, barely survived the jungle pilgrimage to her order's unconventional palace.
"The Russian Front is not so bad," explained Sgt. Heinz Mueller, who added with a leer, "as long as you choose the right Russian."
The sun creeped stealthily beneath the starry sky until its warm, golden fingers suddenly reached upward, clutching the throat of Night, squeezing tighter and tighter until dawn oozed all over the horizon.
"Stop the fight! Stop the fight! It's a massacre!" yelled Miss Donna Sue Kingsley, the fiery, independent daughter of Earl Ray Kingsley, owner of the largest cotton plantation in southern Mississippi; this sudden outburst interrupted the boxing match and her pugilistic brother, bruised, battered and barely standing, was saved by the belle.
It was finally the day the neighborhood children were waiting for, and they all ran out of their houses, their singing filling the air with choruses of "Hooray! Hooray! It's 'Imitate Your Favorite Swamp Lizard' Day!"
"What gun?" she asked, dropping the smoking revolver onto the prone, bullet-riddled corpse of her former lover and tax accountant (his face a twisted mask of surprise, horror and deduction), then added quickly, "You mean his suicide gun?"
Twas the morning before the Feast of the Vernal Equinox (when seven virgins from the village are chosen to be ceremonial brides of the Sun God, Hottbal) as a disheveled Beautifa crept from the hut of Brawno the Bigbicepped thinking, "I wouldn't have looked good in a gold head-dress anyway."
Tommy the Tyrannosaurus Rex merrily stomped through his jungle homeland, catching and eating dinner in a single gulp, fatefully unconcerned about these new things called glaciers.
Once upon a thyme, he sat, but his allergic reaction forced him to stand up again.
As I moved my fishing boat serpentinely across the lake, I realized that rowing is NOT an either oar proposition.
"I am not a dog!" she barked.
The ultimate epitath of his shyness was written upon his tombstone: "Nathan Poindexter -- he finally got laid."
"Aye," said Long Jack Silver, between gulps of his avian feast, "a shoulder parrot is a fine pet, but I couldn't afford the cleaning bills any longer."
To wit, the two wits went to it.
I hope you enjoyed this little tour de farce. Select a link to arrow directly to the top of this page or the 8 arrows home page..