Since 1982 the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest has challenged participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written. The whimsical literary competition honors Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with “It was a dark and stormy night.” Here's the entire opening passage: “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.” ― Edward Bulwer Lytton, Paul Clifford I am sure you can do better (worse?). In this thread, post the most atrocious opening to a novel that your wild imagination can come up with.
This is the 2022 grand prize winner of the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest: "I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn't help—I was fresh out of salami."
More prize winners and dishonorable mentions of the 2022 Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
Frederick was an airline pilot with a lot of baggage (of the metaphorical kind) but he was tired of crying over spilt milk so escaped to the tropical rain forest, unaware that when it rains it pours, in the figure of a mysterious woman in a red dress who hustled souvenir T-shirts, and they were selling like hotcakes, and for a pretty penny, but nothing as pretty as her, so to her he said, "Come fly me."
Detective Sergeant Kat Tendertail slid smoothly out of her warm bed like an over-easy egg from a Teflon frying pan. Eschewing a robe, she drew her Smith & Wesson Shield Plus service weapon from under the pillow on the empty side of the bed, empty since that night four months and six days ago when she had to tell her fiancé, Tab Dinkum, it was over. She padded down the hallway toward the stairs, playfully scolding her rescue Labradoodle, Mister James McGunegle, for sleeping on the landing (again!) and descended to the kitchen, where she laid the gun on the counter, poured water in the Keurig and snapped a pod of Happy Belly French Roast into the machine. While the coffee brewed, Kat tapped at the Taco Bell app on her iPhone 14 ordering breakfast to eat on her journey to the state prison, where she was scheduled to witness the execution of the serial killer, Mary Mary Morrison.
Ooh, I love the Bulwer-Lytton contest, but the Lyttle Lytton is even better. Same premise, but with an emphasis on brevity rather than long, meandering sentences. Here are a few of my entries from years past, which sadly never made the cut. "Ten o'clock, and all's well!" cried the cryer, who sobbed hauntingly: "but not in my heart, my heart," before he leapt, crying, from the lonely parapet. At Thunder Cove Erotic Complex, caligulation is a way of life. Deeply longing for her long lost love, the longshoreman's wife gazed longingly o'er the briny deep. Metaphorically, my dear Genevieve is like a sasquatch: a rarity. The fist of Lola Tan's beauty as she swished in the door punched my elated face. Spine! The spine is the heart of all humanity's ills! Call me Gargamel.
Good, err... bad stuff, but she really should be breasting boobily down those stairs, don't you think?
I meant to write "I could read a whole short story like this." I don't think I have the talent to write it. It's gotta be such a fine line, has to be intentionally bad and yet entertaining to really stand out from the crowd. I will give you something that is just ordinarily bad, alas, the best I can do. Thirty-five years before her fiance walked out for good this time, Nancy was born to a homely secretary and lumberjack in Alaska. She was a happy child and well loved by her parents, but when dada had his leg amputated after a tree-fell-gone-wrong, life changed for the worse. Dada turned to alcohol and Mama had to support the family, working three jobs and stocking up on Vaseline. It was a very lonely time in her life, and since she had to be independent, and the warm embraces from her parents transformed into the indifference of a drunk and the burden of a whore, she learned to steel herself and reject love, no matter the source. It wasn't until she was twenty-five before she become interested in boys...
"Hear ye, hear ye" the crier called as I hightailed it past the circle forming around him. Not bothered by what was so important the other shoppers I ignored the commotion. Instead I hurried into the cafe - with everyone outside it was like taking candy from a baby in getting my drink quickly. Though there's something to be said for having to push through the crowd to pick it up normally - it cools slightly, enough not to burn my tongue!
The air rushed out of the room quicker than bread bursting from a high-strung toaster. No one dared to move, because that would mean they were awake, that this was really happening, that the fear, as cold and slippery as a fresh fish running down their spine, was not only real but very, very warranted. The newspaper magnate, oily and uncomfortable in his tailor made suit, crushed the glass in his hand with a flinch that was not his own, fruit punch and blood dotting the marble floor; and the senator’s wife, oily and uncomfortable in the dress she purchased for the occasion, fell helplessly as her eyes rolled back into her skull and she toppled to the ground. No one could come to her aid: their limbs were popsicles, their feet blocks of ice, their nerves melted icecream.
"Don't call me, Ishmael!" she sobbed, leaving the perplexed young man as the target of scowls from everyone in the Parisian restaurant. Turning to the waiter, Ishamel said plaintively: "What'd I do? What'd I do?" The waiter smoothed down his shirt and straightened his tie. "For starters, monsieur, you just ripped off Looney Tunes."
Night poured across the world like an open gallon of Sherwin-Williams midnight blue epoxy enamel paint.
That's oddly (brand-)specific. Let's try ... Samuel's meteoric rise and fall in the field of politics could be best described, visually, as the parabola of a thrown football. And took about the same time. (Uh-oh. Is that bad enough?)
My least favorite expression in English language. Nothing--literally nothing in the terrestrial universe--goes down faster than a meteor. You couldn't find an object less incapable of rising. So, yes... epically terrible.
OK. I know this isn't the right thread, but I just thought of the worst possible atrocious opening to a poem: Come, muse, let us sing of plague. *sniggers, ducks, covers, and awaits the inevitable nuclear explosion of laughter*
My own humble contribution to that esteemed contest won an honorable mention a few years back, in the category of Fantasy: “I could tell you stories about this road we shall be traveling,” the old man told his young companions as he leaned on his staff and stroked his silver beard, “of how it was built by the Dwarves of Barad-dur in the days of Thranduil the Great, numberless years before the Elves of the Ered Luin left their silver woods in Lindon, sailed their ships over the Western Sea, and passed from the knowledge of men, but what would you learn from these tales, except that I squandered my college years reading too much Tolkien instead of meeting girls?”
... and a run-on sentence too. Plus, to start with, I thought you were baiting the Tolkien Estate. So Let's see -- how about: ===================== It was a warm and humid night, a night of hot humidity and humid hotness, a night upon which even authors' brains melt and they start inventing words and using very old words, a night of such humiditude and hottyuity that would be known in legendidity as that ever-known thing in legendarium as "a hot and steamy period between the setting of the sun and the rising of the sun"; upon such nights, i'faith, yea, verily, dark deeds are not committed, and the things that can be heard are dogs lying in the scalding shade and panting, the rumble of the refrigerator, and the donka-donka-donka of the upstairs neighbors on their foldout bed, exercising their conjugal habit of gettin' it on! ===================== I just came up with that on the spot. Is it bad enough yet?
I was going to say "Not bad at all!" But then I realized that that was the wrong response. It was truly bad. You should enter it in the next contest, if there still is one.
"Good morning." A voice that grated like two marbles rubbing against each other, greeted his ears. Oh god no, that isn't the same woman I was with last night at the pub. "Good morning." He rolled over to see her large toothy grin, which pained him as much as the hangover he was enjoying the second he was conscious.
