Posted on 07/26/2011 6:56:12 PM PDT by SJackson
A University of Wisconsin Oshkosh associate professor has won top prize for her cringe-inducing prose.
Sue Fondrie won the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest -- an annual award that challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. The contest takes its name from the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who began his Paul Clifford with, "It was a dark and stormy night."
At just 26 words, Fondrie's submission is the shortest grand prize winner in the contest's history, "proving that bad writing need not be prolix, or even very wordy," officials said.
"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," Fondrie's offending sentence reads.
Fondrie is the 29th person to win the price since it was started at San Jose State University in 1982. There are also winners named in separate categories including fantasy, romance, adventure and sci-fi.
Most entrants are Americans, but two Canadians were given "dishonourable mentions" this year.
Vancouver writer Basil McDonnell was recognized in the crime category.
"The victim was a short man, with a face full of contradictions: amalgam, composite, dental porcelain, with both precious and non-precious metals all competing for space in a mouth that was open, bloody, terrifying, gaping, exposing a clean set of asymptomatic impacted wisdom teeth, but clearly the object of some very comprehensive dental care, thought Dirk Graply, world-famous womanizer, tough guy, detective, and former dentist," McDonnell wrote.
Aubrey Johnson of Edmonton was also acknowledged in the miscellaneous dishonourable mentions.
Johnston wrote, "Her flaming red hair whipped in the wind like a campfire, stroking the embers of passion hidden within the hearth of my heart and I began to burn with a desire that seared me to my very core -- oh the things that I would do if only I weren't incarcerated for arson!"
might be of interest.
Just curious..is there a ca$h prize..or is it just for the honor and recognition..
Yea, have to give it to the winner, short but evocative.
Three excellent efforts.
On the other hand, I’ve never really understood what’s so bad about “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Bulwer-Lytton judges ougtha visit this forum sometime.
How very...distressing.
My entry.
As a leader, he was not, as a follower he lead the pack,
failure followed him like a mangy hound, while success
eluded his grasp though he claimed it as his own.
"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."
But it was a dark and stormy night... due to the time, which was around midnightish, and the inclement weather due to a high pressure system that hovered over the area like a buzzard looking at its next meal.
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“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,”
He obviously meant Nancy...Pelosi. Something suffered in the translation.
by Jay Dardenne
Winner of the "Vile Puns" category in the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton.
Could of picked any Obama speech.
It wasn’t the dark and stormy night that was the problem; it was the hideous overblown Victorian writing in the rest of the book.
ROFLMAO! Thanks for the laugh. ;-)
Nor I. It always seemed like a reasonable sentence to me (certainly not worth the mockery).
Although I have to admit that I also liked Fondrie's and Johnson's sentences - so I flunk as a writing critic. I thought they were kind of funny. McDonnel's was the only one that I'd lump into the category of poor writing.
It was a dark and stormy night, as the sun set at its designated time, five hours earlier, surprising no one that evening in the vicinity of the suburban development where our story transpires, while the gusts of wind and occasional rain sent our lovelorn heroes to the safety to their adobes, somewhere on the floors of their multi-story condominiums built during the housing boom of the previous decade and featuring such amenities as covered parking, laundry (coin operated) and small gyms with full sets of dumbells weighing anywhere from two to eighty pounds.
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