« IRA Stands Down - Too late for Robert McCartney | Main | London Police lied about the man they murdered in an underground station. »
July 28, 2005
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - San Jose State's Bad Writing Contest
As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.
Dan McKay
Fargo, ND
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, also known as the Bad Writing or Dark and Stormy Night Contest, is an international literary parody. The competition honors the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). Entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words "It was a dark and stormy night."
The contest began in 1982 as a quiet campus affair, attracting only three submissions. This response being a thunderous success by academic standards, the contest went public the following year and ever since has attracted thousands of annual entries from all over the world. This year category winners came not just from the United States but from Brazil, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Technorati tags:
Delicious tags:
Folksonomy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share web pages.
Posted by Peenie Wallie on July 28, 2005 at 01:34 PM
Comments
The following is not an example of bad writing, but definitely politically incorrect, as the author admits:
“Having dispatched the blackguards who had beset upon him on the road, Lord Greystoke took him to the woods to fetch some faggots for a fire, but Mother Nature was a niggard with her fruits, and he found but few sticks and poor.”
He also wrote an "experimental" Russian novel.
Posted by: Robert on July 28, 2005 at 09:02 PM