...swelled with love like two perfectly popped pans of Jiffy Pop
August 20, 2021 7:20 PM Subscribe
The 2021 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winners, pre vio sly
"As the two beheld each other, Lady Asthenia's bosom swelled with love like two perfectly popped pans of Jiffy Pop while Lord Mycort's heart melted like butter, making their union complete."
"As the two beheld each other, Lady Asthenia's bosom swelled with love like two perfectly popped pans of Jiffy Pop while Lord Mycort's heart melted like butter, making their union complete."
One vote to please add the #sweetart tag because this shit is, as always, solid gold.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 8:26 PM on August 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 8:26 PM on August 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
His voice rang out sweet and loud, like maple syrup that had achieved speech and wished to push its deeply held political beliefs on others.
The poor sap.
posted by eponym at 8:36 PM on August 20, 2021 [10 favorites]
The poor sap.
posted by eponym at 8:36 PM on August 20, 2021 [10 favorites]
Maybe it's just the exhausted state of mind I'm in right now, but most of the winners are far more magnificently brilliant camp bad than hilariously cringe inducing bad.
I feel like to be truly bad, never mind worst, the prose has to be unselfconsciously in the latter category.
Nevertheless, they are magnificently brilliant.
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:11 PM on August 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
I feel like to be truly bad, never mind worst, the prose has to be unselfconsciously in the latter category.
Nevertheless, they are magnificently brilliant.
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:11 PM on August 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
There's camp and kamp
thought D.B. Cooper as he canoodled with his common-law Sasquatch wife D'un'h in their cozy lean-to deep in the sodden Cascade foothills.
Im collating the various movies "jumping out of a perfectly good airplane" appears in.
I'm thinking 3 which negates the camp effect skirting the realm of trope.
Seriously bad writing would include a newly weaved to-trope.
posted by clavdivs at 10:32 PM on August 20, 2021
thought D.B. Cooper as he canoodled with his common-law Sasquatch wife D'un'h in their cozy lean-to deep in the sodden Cascade foothills.
Im collating the various movies "jumping out of a perfectly good airplane" appears in.
I'm thinking 3 which negates the camp effect skirting the realm of trope.
Seriously bad writing would include a newly weaved to-trope.
posted by clavdivs at 10:32 PM on August 20, 2021
Zalzidrax--I feel the same way. It's not like these are bad first lines of novels. They are actually very well-crafted, satirical first lines of (non-existent) novels. Awards for actual bad first lines of real, published novels, I know there's the Bad Sex in Fiction, but AFAIK not one for opening lines.
posted by zardoz at 11:53 PM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by zardoz at 11:53 PM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
They are actually very well-crafted, satirical first lines of (non-existent) novels.
True, but I'll take it. (They said, like the burbeling fount of good humoured daditude they commonly (and here we mean to convey as common as the number 7 bus to west end, you the one, with the bad seat in the back row and the driver who seems nice but also never remembers you and so their solicitude feels hollow and pointless as advertisements for toenail fungus cream that adorn like the festive banners of some podiatric hygiene obsessive tribe of ancient Roman times, granted with access to modern computers and four-colour separation printing, might have festooned their tents on the battleground of some great, ancient conflict over the right to sow grain or maybe ferment tofu) held to be. At least by the bus driver who, in fact, was not a shallow cut-out of a person but in truth a jazz musician who played bass clarinet and hated it with all the hate he could muster.)
posted by From Bklyn at 12:27 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
True, but I'll take it. (They said, like the burbeling fount of good humoured daditude they commonly (and here we mean to convey as common as the number 7 bus to west end, you the one, with the bad seat in the back row and the driver who seems nice but also never remembers you and so their solicitude feels hollow and pointless as advertisements for toenail fungus cream that adorn like the festive banners of some podiatric hygiene obsessive tribe of ancient Roman times, granted with access to modern computers and four-colour separation printing, might have festooned their tents on the battleground of some great, ancient conflict over the right to sow grain or maybe ferment tofu) held to be. At least by the bus driver who, in fact, was not a shallow cut-out of a person but in truth a jazz musician who played bass clarinet and hated it with all the hate he could muster.)
posted by From Bklyn at 12:27 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I agree with Zalzidrax too. This sort of stuff's only really funny when the writer didn't know they were being bad. Here's a few examples preserved in National Lampoon's Lines From the Slushpile, which collected lines from unsolicited manuscripts sent on spec to an unnamed publishing house:
Thoughts flew like spaghetti in my brain.
"It's not easy to eek out a living," said Yvonne.
She was furious with her bank teller for eating up her lunch hour.
Without moving, she reached across and kissed him.
And my absolute favourite of all time:
"Well," she said suavely, "viola for now."
posted by Paul Slade at 12:43 AM on August 21, 2021 [7 favorites]
Thoughts flew like spaghetti in my brain.
"It's not easy to eek out a living," said Yvonne.
She was furious with her bank teller for eating up her lunch hour.
Without moving, she reached across and kissed him.
And my absolute favourite of all time:
"Well," she said suavely, "viola for now."
posted by Paul Slade at 12:43 AM on August 21, 2021 [7 favorites]
> "They are actually very well-crafted, satirical first lines of (non-existent) novels."
Some not even necessarily satirical. Some of these sound like seriously intended books I would read.
"Even out here in zero gravity her absence was dragging him down, he missed her wonky smile, her long delicate fingers, the little moments, the scales of her inner thighs rubbing against his soft human skin, her tentacles stretching involuntarily during the night and stealing the covers, but she was gone now and a million light years kept them apart."
I mean, if I came across that in a Becky Chambers book I wouldn't even blink.
posted by kyrademon at 6:13 AM on August 21, 2021 [5 favorites]
Some not even necessarily satirical. Some of these sound like seriously intended books I would read.
"Even out here in zero gravity her absence was dragging him down, he missed her wonky smile, her long delicate fingers, the little moments, the scales of her inner thighs rubbing against his soft human skin, her tentacles stretching involuntarily during the night and stealing the covers, but she was gone now and a million light years kept them apart."
I mean, if I came across that in a Becky Chambers book I wouldn't even blink.
posted by kyrademon at 6:13 AM on August 21, 2021 [5 favorites]
The original "It was a dark and stormy night” isn’t really bad so much as overwritten. I think that’s what people are going for.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:23 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:23 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
I was recently reading the NYRB Classics release of Storm by George R. Stewart and gave up when I came to this paragraph on page 43 (which is also introducing a new character):
"Huddling in overcoat and muffler against the winter chill, leaning heavily upon a cane, the old man moved along the sidewalk. With dimly seeing eyes he peered uncertainly through the yellow half-light of the street lamps.He was very old; once he might have been fairly tall, but now he was bent and shrunken; the hair which showed at his temples was snow white. As he came to the steps of the Federal Building, he paused and then tapped with his cane to be sure that he had seen aright."
posted by perhapses at 8:39 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
"Huddling in overcoat and muffler against the winter chill, leaning heavily upon a cane, the old man moved along the sidewalk. With dimly seeing eyes he peered uncertainly through the yellow half-light of the street lamps.He was very old; once he might have been fairly tall, but now he was bent and shrunken; the hair which showed at his temples was snow white. As he came to the steps of the Federal Building, he paused and then tapped with his cane to be sure that he had seen aright."
posted by perhapses at 8:39 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
As the Lyttons have gotten more elaborate and less like actual opening lines, I've come to prefer The Lyttle Lytton Contest, which limits entries to 200 words.
Brevity, soul, wit, and all that.
Awards for actual bad first lines of real, published novels
And they do have a "Found" Division, though it's still relies on reader submissions, and eligibility rules appear to be generous.
posted by cheshyre at 9:04 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Brevity, soul, wit, and all that.
Awards for actual bad first lines of real, published novels
And they do have a "Found" Division, though it's still relies on reader submissions, and eligibility rules appear to be generous.
posted by cheshyre at 9:04 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
When I got to the one about the laugh sounding like dog vomit I blinked in the key of "I've read this before." And indeed there's a version floating around the internet:
Also, seconding the love for the Lyttle Lytton—Cadre's commentary on each submission adds a lot of depth.
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 11:32 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.It seems to originate from Week 310 of the Washington Post's Style Invitational in 1999—a source of additional delights eg "She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs."
Also, seconding the love for the Lyttle Lytton—Cadre's commentary on each submission adds a lot of depth.
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 11:32 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
I like the idea that they could have an "Intentional" category where people submit the worst writing they can muster.
posted by rhizome at 4:45 PM on August 21, 2021
posted by rhizome at 4:45 PM on August 21, 2021
Metafilter: ... where people submit the worst writing they can muster.
posted by From Bklyn at 10:22 AM on August 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by From Bklyn at 10:22 AM on August 22, 2021 [1 favorite]
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No, this is amazing.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:11 PM on August 20, 2021 [8 favorites]