...And Maybe Get Some Custard After
September 4, 2018 4:47 AM Subscribe
The 2018 winner, runners-up and dishonorable mentions of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad opening sentences of non-existent novels have been announced. (previouslies)
I would also read the library one. And probably a couple others, because I actually like tongue-in-cheek writing. I feel like a lot of these wouldn't even be bad if they were separated into three actual sentences instead of one.
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:25 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:25 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
I feel like a lot of these wouldn't even be bad if they were separated into three actual sentences instead of one.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with the content or the story that is being told, I think this is more how the story is being told and written, the grammar.
posted by Fizz at 5:27 AM on September 4, 2018
Yeah, I don't have a problem with the content or the story that is being told, I think this is more how the story is being told and written, the grammar.
posted by Fizz at 5:27 AM on September 4, 2018
Okay, I'll take this as a challenge:
Imp froze as he turned the corner onto Regents Street and saw four elven warriors shackling a writhing Santa to the stainless-steel cross outside Hamleys Toy Shop.
(Opening of a novel that doesn't exist yet because I haven't actually begun writing it in earnest. And it's hopefully a loser at the Bulwer-Lytton. But I thought you might enjoy it anyway. Anyone else? Scalzi, how about you?)
posted by cstross at 6:04 AM on September 4, 2018 [16 favorites]
Imp froze as he turned the corner onto Regents Street and saw four elven warriors shackling a writhing Santa to the stainless-steel cross outside Hamleys Toy Shop.
(Opening of a novel that doesn't exist yet because I haven't actually begun writing it in earnest. And it's hopefully a loser at the Bulwer-Lytton. But I thought you might enjoy it anyway. Anyone else? Scalzi, how about you?)
posted by cstross at 6:04 AM on September 4, 2018 [16 favorites]
I can't decide whether my favorite is, "He glanced at his unsuspecting guests..." or, "Under a lurid dawn sun..."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:29 AM on September 4, 2018
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:29 AM on September 4, 2018
I love these so much. I'm sure my writing is no better, especially since my last published piece was a detective noir satire, but still I love this contest so much.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:38 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:38 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
I feel like a lot of these wouldn't even be bad if they were separated into three actual sentences instead of one.
Parodying an actual Bad Writing habit - it's amazing how many people seemingly think that ending a sentence and beginning a new one Just Won't Do, as it will signal that they aren't a very very smart person.
posted by thelonius at 6:38 AM on September 4, 2018
Parodying an actual Bad Writing habit - it's amazing how many people seemingly think that ending a sentence and beginning a new one Just Won't Do, as it will signal that they aren't a very very smart person.
posted by thelonius at 6:38 AM on September 4, 2018
Once upon a time, there was a place where things happened; allow me to be more specific.
Ah the classics...
posted by Molesome at 6:44 AM on September 4, 2018 [9 favorites]
Ah the classics...
posted by Molesome at 6:44 AM on September 4, 2018 [9 favorites]
Imp froze as he turned the corner onto Regents Street and saw four elven warriors shackling a writhing Santa to the stainless-steel cross outside Hamleys Toy Shop.
I'll never forget the backhanded compliment I got at a writer's workshop when I was but a callow youth:
"Well, that's certainly a sentence that no one else has ever written in the history of the English language."
I actually don't remember the sentence itself, except that it had Satan in it, as opposed to Santa.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:04 AM on September 4, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'll never forget the backhanded compliment I got at a writer's workshop when I was but a callow youth:
"Well, that's certainly a sentence that no one else has ever written in the history of the English language."
I actually don't remember the sentence itself, except that it had Satan in it, as opposed to Santa.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:04 AM on September 4, 2018 [4 favorites]
Some of these submissions are great, but others reek the stench of trying too hard and sound the thrum of the barely suppressed hysteria of people who really really want you to love Gilbert and Sullivan and think acting in the local Savoyards' production of their operettas, especially HMS Pinafore or The Pirates of Penzance, is simply a matter of stringing together two hours' worth of bits of business.
posted by carmicha at 7:21 AM on September 4, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by carmicha at 7:21 AM on September 4, 2018 [4 favorites]
They’re all really long sentences because this is a contest for the opening sentence and so if you want to pack a lot of jokes or bad metaphors or whatever into it you have to string what should be a bunch of regular sentences together as awkwardly as that moment In a wedding when all everyone suddenly realizes that the groom was just a tuxedo full of marmosets and that’s why all the guests seemed to be from the bride’s side.
posted by aubilenon at 7:49 AM on September 4, 2018 [15 favorites]
posted by aubilenon at 7:49 AM on September 4, 2018 [15 favorites]
"There ought to be," said the editor hefting a flamethrower, "a word limit."
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:08 AM on September 4, 2018 [20 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:08 AM on September 4, 2018 [20 favorites]
To be fair, the three-sentences-in-one format also replicates the structure of the opening sentence that has made poor EBL so infamous: "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 house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
posted by thomas j wise at 8:22 AM on September 4, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by thomas j wise at 8:22 AM on September 4, 2018 [8 favorites]
"There ought to be," said the editor hefting a flamethrower, "a word limit."
For lovers of more economically florid prose, the Lyttle Lytton Contest (most recent previously) has a 200-character limit.
posted by mubba at 8:28 AM on September 4, 2018 [10 favorites]
For lovers of more economically florid prose, the Lyttle Lytton Contest (most recent previously) has a 200-character limit.
posted by mubba at 8:28 AM on September 4, 2018 [10 favorites]
It can only be said that to be a bad author, one must include many commas to the very long sentence which contains one's incorrect use of ephithet in the opening part, and that they will only continue adding many more words and incorrect grammar before coming to a satisfying end, such as a comparison to a force of nature; and so the author does pause, now, before the end to think of something in the wrong tense that is truly wonderful to bring everything to a close, perhaps like a cyclone entering the eye and then blowing through it and then it just all turns into a pleasant drizzle; naturally, she did. And does.
posted by h00py at 8:37 AM on September 4, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by h00py at 8:37 AM on September 4, 2018 [9 favorites]
The line also appears in Washington Irving's light classic, A Doleful Disaster of Anthony the Trumpeter, from his A History of New-York, which predates Bulwer-Lytton by several years. Irving was playing it for laughs.
B-L was playing it for thrills. Successfully, too. The first edition of Paul Clifford (1830), his fifth novel and source of the line, sold out in one day. It's all about a highwayman, true love, crime 'n' punishment, and a case of unexpected identity. Proto Dickens, with a dash of Sabatini, if you like, written when the author was twenty seven. The intent (besides money) was to throw some needed light on injustice in the criminal justice system.
Does the writing pick up? You be the judge:
"Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person.
“Hast got it, Dummie?” said she, quickly, as she closed the door on the guest.
“Noa, noa! not exactly; but I thinks as 'ow—”
“Pish, you fool!” cried the woman, interrupting him peevishly. “Vy, it is no use desaving me. You knows you has only stepped from my boosing-ken to another, and you has not been arter the book at all. So there's the poor cretur a raving and a dying, and you—”
“Let I speak!” interrupted Dummie in his turn."
And so forth.
Mind you, this sort of prose was not that unusual at the time, and would be for decades to come, so the question remains, who picked this one out for special ridicule? And when? And what modern authors will our posterity be chortling over in 2210?
Cf by the way, another sample of Victorian social justice lit: "Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky." (No prizes for guessing the book or the author)
The author's personal life was - complicated
posted by BWA at 8:38 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
B-L was playing it for thrills. Successfully, too. The first edition of Paul Clifford (1830), his fifth novel and source of the line, sold out in one day. It's all about a highwayman, true love, crime 'n' punishment, and a case of unexpected identity. Proto Dickens, with a dash of Sabatini, if you like, written when the author was twenty seven. The intent (besides money) was to throw some needed light on injustice in the criminal justice system.
Does the writing pick up? You be the judge:
"Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person.
“Hast got it, Dummie?” said she, quickly, as she closed the door on the guest.
“Noa, noa! not exactly; but I thinks as 'ow—”
“Pish, you fool!” cried the woman, interrupting him peevishly. “Vy, it is no use desaving me. You knows you has only stepped from my boosing-ken to another, and you has not been arter the book at all. So there's the poor cretur a raving and a dying, and you—”
“Let I speak!” interrupted Dummie in his turn."
And so forth.
Mind you, this sort of prose was not that unusual at the time, and would be for decades to come, so the question remains, who picked this one out for special ridicule? And when? And what modern authors will our posterity be chortling over in 2210?
Cf by the way, another sample of Victorian social justice lit: "Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky." (No prizes for guessing the book or the author)
The author's personal life was - complicated
posted by BWA at 8:38 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
Ah yes, I do understand why there are so many run-on sentences, my actual point was that a truly terrible opening line isn't just grammatically bad, it should also be *conceptually* bad. So bad that even if it was split into three sentences, it couldn't be saved.
The Lyttle Lyton awards are more my jam, I guess, they pack badness in so efficiently.
posted by stillnocturnal at 8:48 AM on September 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
The Lyttle Lyton awards are more my jam, I guess, they pack badness in so efficiently.
posted by stillnocturnal at 8:48 AM on September 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
h00py, are you David Foster Wallace? You're David Foster Wallace, aren't you.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 9:43 AM on September 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 9:43 AM on September 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
This is not bad. I would read this.
as I recently noted elsewhere -- I would read a book that started thus:
The omelette was only slightly less appalling than his Sandyhook views.
The first chapter anyway ...
posted by philip-random at 9:45 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
as I recently noted elsewhere -- I would read a book that started thus:
The omelette was only slightly less appalling than his Sandyhook views.
The first chapter anyway ...
posted by philip-random at 9:45 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
But this:
Have you read NPCs by Drew Hayes? Sounds like you might like it.
posted by Lexica at 11:34 AM on September 4, 2018
His steel sang as Dothrak, mighty thews febrile with barely-checked power, drew Aelthmor (the blade forged in eldritch shadows by the Zdrahali adepts) and declared, “All who have sworn allegiance to the False Duke will feel my wrath!” yet he was summarily admonished to silence, for it is at the Reference Desk of the Skokie Public Library that our story takes place.This is not bad. I would read this.
Have you read NPCs by Drew Hayes? Sounds like you might like it.
posted by Lexica at 11:34 AM on September 4, 2018
On the one hand, I feel these submissions are robbed of life thanks to the knowledge that they stand with nothing behind them, like a cheap studio set. On the other hand, there's no way an actual novel could live up to the perfection these invoke in one's imagination.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:34 AM on September 4, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:34 AM on September 4, 2018 [3 favorites]
His steel sang as Dothrak, mighty thews febrile with barely-checked power, drew Aelthmor (the blade forged in eldritch shadows by the Zdrahali adepts) and declared, “All who have sworn allegiance to the False Duke will feel my wrath!” yet he was summarily admonished to silence, for it is at the Reference Desk of the Skokie Public Library that our story takes place.
This is not bad. I would read this.
This reads like a 21st-century retelling of A Confederacy of Dunces, and I LOVE IT.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 12:26 PM on September 4, 2018
This is not bad. I would read this.
This reads like a 21st-century retelling of A Confederacy of Dunces, and I LOVE IT.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 12:26 PM on September 4, 2018
A lot of quotable tidbits, from "applying ice to the timbers" to "defenestration by octogenarian".
But my favorites are the 4th-wall-destroying "The following is a work of fiction and resemblances between a character in it and any person, living or dead, are purely coincidental apart from the one based on my bitch of an ex-wife." and "Once upon a time, there was a place where things happened; allow me to be more specific.", which should be the all time grand prize winner for the Lyttle Lytton contest, and I'm amazed something almost identical hasn't shown up here before.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:06 PM on September 4, 2018
But my favorites are the 4th-wall-destroying "The following is a work of fiction and resemblances between a character in it and any person, living or dead, are purely coincidental apart from the one based on my bitch of an ex-wife." and "Once upon a time, there was a place where things happened; allow me to be more specific.", which should be the all time grand prize winner for the Lyttle Lytton contest, and I'm amazed something almost identical hasn't shown up here before.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:06 PM on September 4, 2018
"It was either a dark or a stormy night, depending, of course, on if one was comparing globally or locally, as the midnight sun would be considered quite bright to the rest of the world, and by Alaskan standards, the negative fifty-degree wind chill would be considered balmy," thought Janet as she wrestled yet another sled dog out of the alien's tractor beam.
I would totally read this novel because Janet sounds like my kind of beanplating badass.
posted by medusa at 2:42 PM on September 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
I would totally read this novel because Janet sounds like my kind of beanplating badass.
posted by medusa at 2:42 PM on September 4, 2018 [2 favorites]
thomas j wise: to be fair, the three-sentences-in-one format also replicates the structure of the opening sentence that has made poor EBL so infamous
I'm picturing you typing that from memory....
posted by Pink Frost at 12:40 AM on September 5, 2018
I'm picturing you typing that from memory....
posted by Pink Frost at 12:40 AM on September 5, 2018
Have you read NPCs by Drew Hayes? Sounds like you might like it.
Hmmm thank you for the suggestion, but just skimming that chapter there I'll have to pass as I have never played D&D and the talk of dice and Game Masters is going over my head. :)
posted by like_neon at 3:21 AM on September 5, 2018
Hmmm thank you for the suggestion, but just skimming that chapter there I'll have to pass as I have never played D&D and the talk of dice and Game Masters is going over my head. :)
posted by like_neon at 3:21 AM on September 5, 2018
« Older Cultivate quiet spaces or go mad | The HAGS are dead. Long live the HAGS. Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
He glanced at his unsuspecting guests, his slight smile hiding his hateful mood, his calm eyes hiding his evil intentions, and his smooth skin hiding his tensed muscles, skeletal structure, and internal organs.
But this:
His steel sang as Dothrak, mighty thews febrile with barely-checked power, drew Aelthmor (the blade forged in eldritch shadows by the Zdrahali adepts) and declared, “All who have sworn allegiance to the False Duke will feel my wrath!” yet he was summarily admonished to silence, for it is at the Reference Desk of the Skokie Public Library that our story takes place.
This is not bad. I would read this.
posted by like_neon at 5:16 AM on September 4, 2018 [29 favorites]