'It Was a Dark & Stormy Night' Bad Writing Contest- Try Writing One!

[Archaic]

Hi everybody. Most of you will have heard of this writing contest, where bad literary style is celebrated... and I mean bad.

It's called the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, and was inspired by the opening sentence of a novel written by George Bulwer-Lytton in 1830:

"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."

The contest is sponsored and judged by San Jose State University. The grand prize is a "pittance": $250.
(Plus eternal fame and glory and the envy of complete strangers.)

RULES: The rules are only that the work is to be original, is to consist of a single sentence, and is to be written as if it were the opening line of a novel.
In other words, it's supposed to be as atrocious as possible without being gibberish. It's recommended that the sentences not go beyond 50 or 60 words.

The deadline has passed for the 2012 contest, which will be decided next month, but that gives us a whole year to churn out some wretchedly prize-worthy entries for 2013! (Unless the world ends in December, which would be a terrible waste of bad literature.)

The Contest Categories Are:

Crime
Historical Fiction
Vile Puns (You hear that Robert??)
Adventure
Romance
Sci-Fi
Fantasy
Purple Prose
Western

Here's a Wikipedia article that gives a brief overview of the contest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulwer%...iction_Contest

And here's the official Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest website, where you can choke over the winning entries from previous years[/B]: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/index.html

I can't wait to read what you guys come up with!
Cheers,
Archaic

[Archaic]

2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winner

Here's the winning entry from 2011:

Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces
that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories. — Sue Fondrie, Oshkosh, WI





Archaic

[Archaic]

A Couple More 2011 Contest Winners

Vile Puns- Winner:

Detective Kodiak plucked a single hair from the bearskin rug and at once understood the grisly nature of the crime: it had been a ferocious act, a real honey, the sort of thing that could polarize a community, so he padded quietly out the back to avoid a cub reporter waiting in the den. — Joe Wyatt, Amarillo, TX


Purple Prose- Dishonorable Mention:

LaTrina – knowing he must live – let her hot, wet tongue slide slowly over Gladiator’s injured ear, the taste reminding her of the late June flavor of a snow chain that had been removed from a tire and left to rust on the garage floor without being rinsed off. — Betsy Replogle, Nichols Hills, OK

(These winning entries and many more are available on the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest website.)

Archaic

[lynn cates]

Once upun a time.

Hello Bunny. Those first puns are so bad I can hardly bear them.

Cheers.
LC

[Archaic]

First Try To Write Real Bad

Hi Lynn.

Here's my first try. It's surprisingly hard to write real real bad.


The top-hatted, becaped and bejeweled toff slunk menacingly up the loudly cobbled alley in his rubber-soled hobnail boots, cruelly cutting his way through the night’s blindingly ink-like churning mists of miasmically greasy London fog that clung to him to like static whilst seeking an unfortunate prostitute to pounce upon as if he was an evil jungle jaguar catching her within his spider’s-web of Fate so he could do them to death with the glinting blade of his foully hidden knife.

Wow, I need to go lie down.
Archaic

[Robert]

The moon glinted in the sky - there was nowhere else for it to glint - and a deluge of what can only be described as rain soaked Jack the Ripper as he unobtrusively skipped and pranced to the door of number thirteen where he stopped and boomed in a hoarse voice, "Mary Kelly, if you are in there, prepare to meet thy god, but if you're not in there you'll have to meet him somewhere else."

[Tom_Wescott]

Try our hand at bad writing? I'm way ahead of the rest of you folks. Click the 'Dissertations' section and you'll find a few entries from me.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Archaic]

Good one, Robert!

Try our hand at bad writing? I'm way ahead of the rest of you folks. Click the 'Dissertations' section and you'll find a few entries from me.

Guess I'm right behind you Tom, because I just saw that I left the words "A Dark" out of the thread title! Oh well... at least the mangled title suits the subject matter.


Here's another contest winner that I got a kick out of:

"Deep into that particular wet Saturday night ugly blues screamed out from the old man’s horn like a hooker
being hauled down a flight of stairs, regular thick loud thumps punctuated by nasty and erratic sharp barks." — John Benson, Carthage, MO

So inspiring!
Archaic

[Robert]

By a foreign gentleman :



It was another pee soup day in London Town and you could not see your face in front of your hand as the tall dim man called out to the woman "I will kill you," but as he could not find her in the fog he went home.

[Archaic]

Robert, that one's awesome!!!

"The tall dim man", lol.

Cheers,
Archaic

[Rubyretro]

Outside it was grim.

The weather was grim, the room inside was grim, the wind and rain in the courtyard were grimishly grim.

She felt pretty grim thinking about all this grimnish.

She laid down on the grim bed in the small grimly furnished room and passed out.

He put his arm through the window, silently, with a grim determination.

"Mummy! I love you" he said to himself gaily, a grim look on his face.

He raised the knife to her prostate body.

It was all pretty much grim.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Archaic, I hate to burst your bubble, but you're actually a damn good writer. I'm afraid you would lose any bad writing contest you entered. Sorry, just being honest.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Archaic]

Hi Tom. Funny; that's what somebody else said.

But I think you guys are just being cruel... because I'm willing to work hard at writing badly! HARD I tell you!

It's a dream of mine...I wanna be a contender...

Damn it, I WILL LEARN TO MIX METAPHORS!!

There! I said it. (And hey, lightning didn't strike me. Cool.)

My mind's made up.

I'll keep plugging away at it until I am a spectacularly bad writer, and someday you will all stand or maybe kneel or even sit if you want to in awe of my extreme badness.

Archaic

[Robert]

Oh, I can write crap till the cows come home, Bunny.

It was in the early hours of the thirtieth of September 1888 that Mr Lawende, Mr Levy and Mr Harris emerged from their club, where they had spent a pleasant and convivial evening, and directed their steps to the roaring fires and welcoming bosoms of home, each man full of good cheer and thankfully unaware of the frightful events which were about to be enacted, events which would disturb the repose of gentlefolk and strike fear into the breast of every female, be she duchess or sempstress, high born or low.

[Phil Carter]

The sun had it's hat on. What type of hat is unsure, though most thought a fedora the most likely, as the sun liked watching Federer play tennis. Had Federer been playing cricket, the sun would have used another hat, a panama. Howeve as the sun knew of no cricket played in Pamama, he decided against it. In consequence of rain, the sun chose a Sou' Wester- which pointed the sun in the right direction- to enable the sun to endure the consequences. Consequently, and as a result of this, the traditional northerly flat cap was left on the shelf. The shelf-life of flat caps though,was full of Eastern promise, this delight waking the sun every morning until the end of the last set of tthe tennis match- for the sun knew that it had to set in the West- hence the fedora. Yes, the sun had got his hat on. Which meant another tennis match, as the sun always came out to play with its hat on.

An old Russian woman called Olga had a husband called Ulf, who was Swedish. Ulf was the most Leninist of all communists. But Ulf was always swearing, and was always telling rude jokes.
They had been married 45 years and every day they would try to guess what weather the next day would bring.
One December evening it was cold, and Olga predicted snow. Ulf cursed and said it would rain. They argued to such an extent that Olga said-
' For 45 years Ive put up with you and your swearing and know-all attitude. So tomorrow morning, if it snows like I say you pack your bags and leave. If it rains, I will pack my bags and leave.' Ulf smiled and agreed.
The next morning they woke up and went downstairs to the kichen. Outside- it was pouring down with rain. Ulf laughed, swore at his wife and told her to pack ger bags. She went upstairs and did just that. When she came down she stood in the doorway, tearful, and asked-
' how? How were you SO certain it would rain?'

' Olga. Its December 25th. And 'RUDE ULF' the RED, knows rain, dear!'