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

[Archaic]

By the way, bad sex scenes are known by weathered internet goers as IKEA porn.

Hi K, that's so funny!

Ikea's wordless assembly instructions are one of my pet peeves. Why can't they throw in an occasional WORD? Thousands of years of written language, but no- they have to use sterile pictograms.

Annoying but OK until you find yourself assembling something that has an inordinate number of pegs, screws, etc that all look alike. They aren't even color-coded! "20X", "25X", "40X"...aargh! It drives me up the wall. "Ikea moments" that have convinced me that my vocabulary of curse words is woefully inadequate. I usually throw away the instruction sheet and figure it out myself, just to preserve my sanity.

Great example, Ruby. No more explaining the Birds & the Bees to children- now there's an Ikea instruction sheet for that. Here you go, kids.

And we can tell them it's no use asking questions. All the necessary parameters are encoded in the pictogram.

Cheers,
Archaic

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE]

By the way, bad sex scenes are known by weathered internet goers as IKEA porn.

Thank you so much K-453 !

I loved this :

"Some Assembly Required"

[K-453]

By the way, bad sex scenes are known by weathered internet goers as IKEA porn.

[Archaic]

I liked 'the eagle eyes of a bunch of crows' but I felt a bit too old for the 'rain sodden grass' cavorting..

The entire passage is highly chortle-inducing. (An affective quality seldom applied to Literature, because I just made it up.)

" Updike wrote about Faye, who "leaned back on the blanket, arranging her legs in an M of receptivity", while her partner was "like the most abject and craven supplicant who ever exposed his bare ass to the eagle eyes of a bunch of crows." "


Archaic

[Rubyretro]

I liked 'the eagle eyes of a bunch of crows' but I felt a bit too old for the 'rain sodden grass' cavorting..

[Archaic]

Guess Who Won the 'Bad Sex In Fiction' Award?

It gets even better: There is also an award for bad sex scenes in fiction!

Thanks, K! I checked the link, then clicked on the links in the footnotes to see if I could read an example, and guess who won the 2005 Bad Sex In Fiction award?

Giles Coren!!
There are some terrific examples of award-winning Bad Sex In Fiction in this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4488848.stm

I love Giles; he and Sue Perkins are wonderful in the Supersizers series. He seems so suave and debonaire, I'm rather surprised to see him in such bad company.

You'd kind of think Sue would win the Bad Sex In Fiction award... but then it would have been done deliberately for a laugh, and I guess the whole point of the award is that it's achieved inadvertently.

So many deep thoughts today.

Archaic

PS: All episodes of Supersizers -a BBC series that effortlessly combines Food, History, and Comedy- are available on YouTube. There are episodes devoted to the Victorians, the Edwardians, the War Years, the Regency,the 1920's etc. I watched ''Supersizers Go 1970's'' with my best friend recently, and we laughed our heads off. Highly recommended.

[Archaic]

Words fail me.
Archaic

Hmmn....that made me drop my cup of tea !

Yeah, I think the unexpected convergence of Romance with Rodents probably made a whole lotta people drop their tea!

I wonder if the author got her inspiration from the sexy pillow talk of our pal Shadow Bear over at 'Meerkat Manor'?

You know, I think it's actually quite healthy for people to laugh until they choke.

(Deep thought of the day.)

Archaic

[K-453]

It gets even better: There is also an award for bad sex scenes in fiction!

[Rubyretro]

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss – a lengthy, ravenous kiss,
Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.
— Molly Ringle, Seattle, WA

Words fail me.
Archaic[/QUOTE]

Hmmn....that made me drop my cup of tea !

[Archaic]

2010 Bulwer-Lytton Winner

I was jonesing for some superlatively bad writing, so checked to see if the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners have been announced yet.

Alas, they haven't, but I don't think we've posted this Grand Prize Winner from 2010 yet:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss – a lengthy, ravenous kiss,
Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.
— Molly Ringle, Seattle, WA



Words fail me.
Archaic

[Archaic]

By the way, "celebrities" includes Jack the Ripper. According to fangirls, not only his knife was large.

Oh, dear. I bet Jack will show up in a Romance novel next!

-Wouldn't it be great if they gave him Strong Bear's stilted prairie dog dialogue?

Best regards,
Archaic

[K-453]

"Erotic fan fiction"? Is that what they call the atrocious supposedly 'sexy' amateur fiction dedicated to celebrities?

By the way, "celebrities" includes Jack the Ripper. According to fangirls, not only his knife was large.

[Archaic]

Here's a link to the thrilling novel if you want to buy it. Or you can just ogle the cover.

http://nalauthors.com/book1273

I have a feeling this poor author wishes she had just made Shadow Bear and Shiona lay back on their feather pillows and silently smoke a few Marlboroughs.

Cheers,
Archaic

[Archaic]

You want 'Bad'? Try the Original 'Meerkat Manor'

"Erotic fan fiction"? Is that what they call the atrocious supposedly 'sexy' amateur fiction dedicated to celebrities? Ugh.

One of my favorite examples of Bad Fiction, not to mention outright Plagiarism, occurs in the cheeseball Romance novel 'Shadow Bear'. (No, I don't read Romance novels, but I do love the oh-so-artistic illustrations on the cover, where every guy looks like a steroid-addled Fabio! )

The author lifted a huge section of a scholarly article published on the topic of Meerkats, and adroitly turned it into the clunkiest, most ludicrous pillowtalk ever.

This is the incident that inspired the phrase 'Meerkat Manor'.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/01/14/move-over-meerkat-manor.html

So bad it's great!

Cheers,
Archaic

[K-453]

If anyone wants to dive into the abysses of bad writing, read erotic fan fiction.