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THE BULWER-LYTTON FICTION CONTEST The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is an annual competition sponsored by San Jose State University and created by Scott Rice that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The contest takes its name from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, an industrious Victorian novelist whose "Paul Clifford" (1830) set a standard for pot-boiling openers: "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." "Sultry it was and humid, but no whisper of air caused the plump, laden spears of golden grain to nod their burdened heads as they unheedingly awaited the cyclic rape of their gleaming treasure, while overhead the burning orb of luminescence ascended its ever-upward path toward a sweltering celestial apex, for although it is not in Kansas that our story takes place, it looks godawful like it." --Judy Frazier, Lathrop, MO, 1991 Winner "The hail pattered against the window like popcorn popping in a well-buttered saucepan; the lightning flashed like a lightbulb when the refrigerator door is opened; the thunder rumbled distantly like a single, lonely chocolate bonbon rolling about in the cookie jar. All of these things kept Cherry awake as she tried to keep her mind off of her diet." --Laurie M. Tossing, Mesa, AZ "Among us comedy writers, the pun is considered the lowest form of humor and a sure sign of burnout, which is why when I tried to sneak one by, my associates had me committed to the Institute for Disturbed Comic Writers at Vail, Colorado. So I now know why they say 'Use a pun, go to Vail!'" --Robert M. Quan, San Francisco, CA "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store." --Richard W. O'Bryan, Perrysburg, OH "He died as he had lived, a dirt-poor but happy farmer, Mother Nature's caretaker in the heartland of America, and now as his son, Bud, listened to the reading of his father's will, bequeathing his last earthly possession, a female sheep, he could hear his father's pun-loving voice resounding in the lawyer's reading of 'This ewe's for Bud.'" --Jack Markov, Philadelphia, PA "Gloria was a woman of violent contrasts: her navel as white, soft, and desirable, was an innie, while her car, black, swift, and powerful, was an Audi." --Brian W. Holmes, San Jose, CA "'My left eye has been slowly shifting over to the right side of my face!' she floundered." --Trevor Dennie, Gloversville, NY "Adam woke with a stitch in his side and a strange woman in his bed." --Stephen P. Scheinberg, Wilmington, DE "Pondering her predicament, Susie Jo-Ellen could sense a solution forming in the back of her mind, but getting it to the front of her mind was like the long, slow, twisting, tortuous journey of water through the corroded, mineral-encrusted, lime-laced West Texas water pipes, and like the water, when it finally got there, it was no good." --Pam N. Shurley, San Angelo, TX "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear', a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death; in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies." --Eddie Lawhorn, Huntsville, AL "He was a man of principle with hair as orange as those soft spongy cones you see lined up on the highway just before a road worker sticks a stop sign out right in front of your car so a bulldozer can cross the road at two miles per hour to totally screw up your whole day." --June Obrochta, Pittsburg, CA "Being turned into a cockroach was a shock of epic proportions, but at least Twinkies still tasted the same." --Jeremy Rice, San Jose, CA "Something told Dorothy she was not in Kansas anymore; maybe it was the color of the sky, maybe it was the air around her, maybe it was the sign on the side of the road that said, 'Welcome to Missouri.'" --Kevin J. Day, Richmond Hts., MO "There was something about her that turned Kamuk on: perhaps it was her hair; perhaps it was her body; perhaps it was her husky voice (so husky it would pull a dog sled); no, it was definitely the way she clubbed seals." --Kyle B. Crocker, Spokane, WA "Hallowe'en's coming... Our story commences with an account of the ghoulish death of the Duke of Breathwaite which, although of little importance to the main events unfolding herein, establishes the atmosphere quite nicely." --Michael Haynes, Lantz, Nova Scotia "The evilly gibbous moon shed its leering light upon the moor and the running figure of Ronald Brownley, who, with hands clutching the forbidden amulet and ears filled with the hellish ululation of thousands of bounding, spectral hounds, realized that it had been he, and he alone, who'd cast the horribly portentous deciding vote against the town's leash law." --Joette M. Rozanski, Toledo, OH "It was at moments like this, with the snow drifting gently past the window on a crisp winter night as he sat in front of the crackling fire holding her hand and gazing into her eyes, that he often wondered what had become of the rest of her." --Peter Tilley, Englewood, CO "The first indication I had that things were not quite as they should be in my host's household was when I noticed that his butler dragged his foot behind him ... on a rope." --Richard W. O'Bryan, Perrysburg, OH "The partially clouded moon rose like a half-eaten marshmallow over a weenie-roasted horizon, making the field of dead Girl Scouts look even more grim and foreboding, in spite of the unusual crispness of the air." --Margaret Baker, Philadelphia, PA |