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!"
"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."
Bulwer-Lytton wasn't usually quite that expansive. I thought The Last Days of Pompeii was a pretty good period piece.
A couple of gems:
As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand—who would take her away from all this—and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had.
Ali Kawashima
Dawn crept up like the panther on the gazelle, except it was light, not dark like a panther, and a panther, though quiet, could never be as silent as the light of dawn, so really the analogy doesn’t hold up well, as cool as it sounds, but it still is a great way to begin a story; just not necessarily this particular one.
Warren Blair
More to be found at the Bulwer-Lytton website, HERE.
“Slowly, the teleprompter began to swim with words marred by the tears that suddenly welled up in his eyes, making him botch this very important speech; but never mind, he would shift blame to TOTUS he thought, as the pesky, rebellious Presidential Seal once again flew off the podium and tried to roll out the door.”
I think I shall enter this contest. Is there any prize money in it?
It’s passive, and it’s telling vs showing. I.e., for the opening line, the author is in narrator mode, which has fallen very, very far out of fashion.
Also, opening a novel with a weather report is considered a classic blunder. Open a weather report with a weather report, and start a (modern) novel in the middle of the action [or some equally engaging part that pulls the reader more into the story at hand than into whatever it is the weather happens to be doing].
As Revolting noted, it segues from there into purple prose, so yeah, it pretty much stinks all around.
For opening lines, I’ve always liked the way Albert Camus began The Stranger:
“Mother died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”
Dammit, I forgot to enter again...
(Don’t do it..I know you want to, but don’t)
“It was a dark and stormy night and once again Gridlock hung thick in the Congressional meeting air.”
Took the words out of my mouth, No, brain? Camus’ opening is my favorite too.
“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.
Probably is a free-lance for the NYT.
I read this in a book once back in my youth:
“The milky white globes of her breasts glowed in the moonlight.”
My entry - dedicated to Democrat robots.
“Like husky dogs tied in a sled line, if you’re not the leader, the assholes all look the same.”
Did you ever read Camus’ The Plague? One of the subplots was this ‘writer’ reworking, over and over his opening line—something about a young woman who could be see on a certain morning cantering her fine sorrel horse, (At one point it was a ‘black sorrel’, until one of his buds explained the mutually exclusivity of two colors. ;)
After the ‘writer’ died of plague, they found his notebook, and all he had completed on the entire novel was the opening line, reworked over and over in a hundred iterations.
With Camus’ light touch, the notebook took on a poignancy all its own; a minor tragedy within a vast, eclipsing tragedy. Despite his hopeless philosophy, they say Camus was a very nice person, and you get a feel for that in his writing—unlike that of the jerk-in-real-life, less personally engaging novelist, Sartre.
Is there a romantic automotive entry?
“Starting with tender, slow caresses and deliberate movements which escalated into forceful grinding that produced vibrating shudders and a shrieking squeal the big rig finally dropped into gear and our trip began”.
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.
It rains gently and unceasingly, It rains listlessly but with infinite patience, as it has always rained upon this earth which is the same color as the sky—somewhere between soft green and ashen grey, and the line of the mountain has been blotted out for a long time now. "For hours?" "No, for years. The line of the mountain was blotted out when Lazaro Codedal died, apparently the Good Lord didn't want it to be seen ever again." Lazaro Codedal died at the Tizzi-Azza post in Morocco, killed by a Moor of the Tafersit tribe, chances are. Lazaro Codedal knew his stuff when it came to getting girls pregnant, he had a taste for it too, and had reddish hair and blue eyes. Lazaro Codedal died young, he can't have been as much as twenty-two, but what good did it do him to be able to play the field better than anyone for fifteen miles around or more? Lazaro Codedal was treacherously killed by a Moor, killed while jacking off beneath a fig tree, everybody knows that the shade of a fig tree is a fine place to sin in peace and quiet. If Lazaro Codedal hadn't had his back turned, nobody--neither a Moor or an Asturian, neither a Portuguese or a Leonese--nobody could have killed Lazaro Codedal face on. The line of the mountain disappeared when Lazaro Codedal was killed and it has never been seen since. It has been raining both steadily and monotonously since the feast of San Ram-n Nonato, maybe even before, and today is the feast of San...
Kafka is just too dark for me. I realize it’s probably literary heresy, but after reading a sizable collection of his short stories, I never wanted to read another. He seemed like he went too often for the cheap tug at the heartstrings. Like he would posit a cute little dog left to die in a deep pit, or a fat, pitiable prostitute jettisoned by the very people she supposedly sacrificed herself for.
I know people praise stories like these to the hilt, but I really did not care for them. It’s just too easy to create a pathetic creature, have supposedly decent people treat it horribly, and leave the reader aghast. To what purpose? To show that decent people have a horrible side to them? Some do and some don’t, but to me, it’s not worth jerking peoples’ emotions around over, fwiw.
[I did like The Metamorphosis more than the others, also fwiw. It seemed like the best of the bunch, but I wouldn’t care to reread it.]
‘Course Cela makes rain the theme of his novel.
Have you read Bruno Schulz?
I haven’t read that one. I’m more a Faulkner, Mann, Wodehouse reader. I once read almost every entry in a Nobel Prize Winner literary collection. Some were good, some seemed pretentious, and some just seemed calculated to appeal to the Nobel committee. But that’s just one person’s opinion. ;)
Omc—I wondered why you said you needed to reread The Stranger! I typoed the title of the Camus book I was talking about (the second time, not the first). It was The Plague, not The Stranger. I am so sorry! I was thinking The Plague but my fingers typed something else. A recurring problem of mine. ;)
By he way, it was Faulkner who said: "You must kill all your darlings".
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