Posted on 01/02/2014 9:12:00 AM PST by Lazamataz
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC) is a tongue-in-cheek contest that takes place annually and is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" – that is, deliberately bad. According to the official rules, the prize for winning the contest is "a pittance",[1] or $250.[2]
The contest was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University and is named for English novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the much-quoted first line "It was a dark and stormy night". This opening, from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, continues floridly:
"Bastards," muttered the Calvary Colonel, watching the teaming mass of Native American warriors, as he gathered arrows from the ground before him, knowing that in a few score years, the arrowheads would be valuable (to his heirs) as documented and valued in the authoritative volume of "Wealth and Antiquities", published in 1978, and valuing these particular Arapaho flint arrowheads at about $78.20 each (if in pristine condition), and he noted that the Indian swarm seemed like some living thing, like a mass of red fire ants that had become resistant to all known insecticides, due to overuse and the tendency of ants who had the resistant gene to pass on the genetic sturdiness to their progeny, "....bastards, all."
Romantic Fiction Entry:
His tongue prowled around my trembling mouth like a cop patrolling a bad neighborhood, ever-watchful for the shady characters that lurked in the shadows, and my heart leaped, excited, up my throat — causing both a cardiac fibrillation event and a nasty choking spell.
Reading the old winners is a hoot. Cheers me up, every time.
That’s awesome. But I can only respond with the opening line of the fantasy novel I’m currently working on.
“A tail swished sensuously into a hole that grew smaller as the tail did but closed tightly on the frilled scaly tip.”
I swear Free Republic needs a ‘like’ button.
Does the contest have a special award for Political Correctness Lampooning?
That’s awesome. But I can only respond with the opening line of the fantasy novel I’m currently working on.
“A tail swished sensuously into a hole that grew smaller as the tail did but closed tightly on the frilled scaly tip.”
“Barry rolled over, swatting the Blackberry across the room as he awoke, it’s dulcet microspeaker tones squaking yet another mangled Muzak version of “The Internationalle” and thinking he’d have to get Val to change that prior to the start of his third term of office.”
ping
My Nonfiction - Business entry:
The company has exhibited leadership by enhancing the facilitation of synergistic, scalable core-competency paradigm-shifts vis-a-vis the most granular service point of difference, empowering the ongoing assurance of the product architecture being functionally equivalent and parallel to the longitudinal business-practice shift postulated by the use of mission-critical management dialogue technology on a go-forward basis, in accordance with ISO-9001:2008 standards.
“Connections” needs another writer.
Disqualified. That’s not fiction. :-)
Gnip
Sure it is. Can you imagine Barry telling Val ANYTHING? Reality is very much the other way around. ;)
Ronald awoke because he was shaking. The shakes were worse today and he felt cold.
Weak and cold and shaky but somehow... better. His mouth was dry.
He sat up in the dim light and stretched, noticing clearly perhaps for the first time his shabby
surroundings. A storeroom behind the workplace, a pallet made of collapsed cardboard boxes and a pillow of plastic packing material. The cramps doubled him over.
He rose and shuffled to the sink and drank from the tap as he had done for the past
three days. Tapwater had been his only nourishment, his comfort and salvation.
His only hope of sanity and freedom.
“We should have known we were on the road to victory as Presiden Bhoner snipped the red ribbon, abolishing the last of the hated border crossings and secured his place in history as the greatest Democrat president of the 21st century, yet we sat in stunned awe at the eloquence with which he ushered in the new age.”
Robert knew that if he passed gas in the echo chamber he’d never hear the end of it.
No fair, you cheated. That's directly out of my company's "Welcome Manual"...
“Karl popped the top on another Lone Star as the smell of pit BBQ’s pork spread through the air, slightly clouding his vision and leaving him wondering if it was the smoke or the twitter message he viewed on his laptop from John discussing the latest success on the merger with the DNC that had brought a tear to his eye.”
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