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
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
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