Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2005 Results

San Jose State English Dept. ^ | 7/28/05 | Really Bad Writers

[ZGuy]

2005 Results Ping

[martin_fierro]

When the great Italian archeologist, Giovanni Battista de Rossi, broke through the centuries of choking rubble and rock in the abandoned catacombs under Rome and the dust cleared, he held his blazing torch high, pickup a flat, dirt-encrusted object with a row of teeth, examined it with his educated eye, and exclaimed, "By the saints, I do believe I've discovered another ancient kitty comb."

Ow.

[rhema]

Ping

[Thud]

I gave some of the books of contest winners to law professor/writer Randy Barnett, who has a column about bad legal writing in California Lawyer, and encouraged him to create a bad legal court opinion contest.

[Bernard Marx]

Bookmark

[ZGuy]

Well, I didn't win anything, but just in case someone might enjoy it, here's my entry for this year's contest:

As the last moonbeams surrendered to the first kiss of the morning sun, Kirsten giggled softly as she let him slowly and tenderly undress her, one item at a time, until she was down to her last piece of clothing which he would soon take off to reveal that secret which only she knew -- her diaper was poopie.

[Tax-chick]

Winner: Detective Patricia wrote out the phrase 'It was a dark and stormy night' exactly seventy-two times, which was the same number of times she stabbed her now quickly-rotting husband, and the same number of pages she ripped out of 'He's Just Not That Into You' by Greg Behrendt to scatter around the room -- not because she was obsessive compulsive, or had any sentimental attachment to the number seventy-two, but because she'd always wanted to give those quacks at CSI a hard time. (Kari A. Stiller College Station, TX)

"He's Just Not That Into You" ping :-).

[badgerlandjim]

Hey, ZGuy - Many thanks for the ping!! I love the Bulwer-Lytton Awards!!

...Huns batted in. LOL - pure genius!

[ecurbh]

Runner-Up: When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday, his children packed his bags and drove him to Golden Pastures retirement complex just off Interstate 95. Stephen Farnsworth Manchester, U.K.

Hehehe...

This one's pretty good too.

After months of pent-up emotions like a caffeine-addict trying to kick the habit, Cathy finally let the tears come, at first dripping sporadically like an old clogged percolator, then increasing slowly like a 10-cup coffeemaker with an automatic drip, and eventually pouring out and noisily wailing like a cappuccino maker complete with slurping froth. Chris Bui Pensacola, FL

[ZGuy]

The freelance writer entry got the biggest LOL from me, but I got less laughs out of it this year than in years past.

[cloud8]

It was a dark and stormy night...

[tje]

bump for later....

[joylyn]

Actually, "It was a dark and stormy night." was a great opening sentence when Bulwer-Lytton wrote it. There's a reason why other people steal words and turn them into cliches.
I enjoy these entries, but the contestants are practicing in a vein of bad writing that Bulwer-Lytton would have scorned. Maybe the contest should be renamed in honor of the author of The DaVinci Code...

[jonascord]

BtT

[MarineBrat]

From a past contest....

10. As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it.

9. Just beyond the Narrows the river widens.

8. With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description.

7. Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.

6. Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back-alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved.

5. Although Ellen had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store.

4. Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do.

3. Like an overripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.

2. 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.

AND THE WINNER IS...

1. The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, "You lied!"

[cloud8]

> Actually, "It was a dark and stormy night." was a great opening sentence when Bulwer-Lytton wrote it.

It still is. Even greater: "Call me Ishmael."

> I enjoy these entries, but the contestants are practicing in a vein of bad writing that Bulwer-Lytton would have scorned.

I think I might have started reading Last Days of Pompeii many years ago...

Remember the Bad Hemingway Contest? Now that was a hoot :)

[Hiddigeigei]

Bulwer-Lytton was a great (or near great writer). It pains me that a contest for bad writing should bear his name because of a line in a comic strip.

130 odd years after his death, some of his novels are still in print. Several movies have been based on his writings as well as a Wagnerian opera. He coined such phrases as "The pen is mightier than the sword' and (although credited elsewhere) "Government of the people, by the people...etc." The latter quote is from his novel Rienzi (1835), which had considerable influence on Northern thinking during the Civil War.

[STARWISE]

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Tax-chick]

The latter quote is from his novel Rienzi (1835), which had considerable influence on Northern thinking during the Civil War.

And inspired Richard Wagner's first opera.