Showing posts with label bulwer-lytton award. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bulwer-lytton award. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Contest Winner?

It's that time of year again.  Since 1982 the English Department of San Jose State University have sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.  Open to anyone with a pen, paper, bad idea and a stamp, or at least access to the internet, the annual  Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, challenges writers to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

Knebworth House, The Bulwer-Lytton ancestral home 

The contest named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of classic lines such as "It was a dark and stormy night", "The pen is mightier than the sword", "the great unwashed:, and "The almighty dollar" selects "winners" in multiple fiction categories. This year's winners have been announced. The complete winner's list is here

Chris Wieloch was the overall winner with this entry:
She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.


Adventure category runner up Ron D. Smith offered :
As the sun dropped below the horizon, the safari guide confirmed the approaching cape buffaloes were herbivores, which calmed everyone in the group, except for Herb, of course.


perhaps you may prefer:

The Pilgrims and Native Americans gathered around the feast, a veritable cornucopia of harvest and game, a gastronomic monument to the bountiful biodiversity of the land, and while Mrs. Standish’s cranberry sauce was a far cry from the homogeneous gelatinous can-imprinted sacrosanct blob which has become the holiday’s sine qua non, the rest of the food was good. — Jordan Kaderli, Dallas, TX

He had a way with women that was at first endearing, then gradually engendered caution and finally outright rejection, like potato salad at a summer picnic. — Paul Sutcliffe, Pittsburgh, PA


Who says the Humanities are dead?
Toad

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Award Time


Are you familiar with the Bulwer-Lytton award? It should strike fear in every blogger's heart.

Given by the English Department of San Jose State University its awarded for the worst opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The awards name, Bulwer-Lytton is derived from Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's and his novel "Paul Clifford". Perhaps you are familiar with its opener.

"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."

Inspired while nursing her son, this year's winner, Molly Ringle won with this entry:
"For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss – a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."

I believe we'd enjoy reading Tom Wallace's, the runner ups, complete novel.

"Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe and, as he walked, the clouds whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to greatest said, 'There goes the most noble among men' – in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur."

We've all taken that walk one time or another. You may submit your own entry here.

Toad