Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The contest (hereafter referred to as the BLFC) was the brainchild (or Rosemary's baby) of Professor Scott Rice, whose graduate school excavations unearthed the source of the line "It was a dark and stormy night." Sentenced to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he chose the man with the funny hyphenated name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who was best known for perpetrating The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene Aram, Rienzi, The Caxtons, The Coming Race, and--not least--Paul Clifford, whose famous opener has been plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle Snoopy.

The rules to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are childishly simple:

• Sentences may be of any length (though you go beyond 50 or 60 words at your peril), and entrants may submit more than one, but all entries must be original and previously unpublished.
• Entries should be submitted on index cards, the sentence on one side and the entrant's name, address, and phone number on the other.
• Entries will be judged by categories, from "general" to detective, western, science fiction, romance, and so on. There will be overall winners as well as category winners.
• The deadline is April 15 (a date Americans associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories).

Send your entries to:
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Department of English
San Jose State University
San Jose, CA 95192-0090

To inflict your BLFC entry electronically, digitally stimulate Bulwer's nasal member (and please include your name, phone number, and addresses--snail and e-mail):
  Send electronic entrants to Scott Rice here

It was a dark and stormy night...your scaring me man !

The cave stank of rotting flesh(a smell that watered his eyes and had him tasting the bile rising in the back of his throat), blood dripping from the walls in every direction as if the dark hole was itself bleeding, Big Omyway backed in neverously, lowly crouched, thinking of the death from above that would soon come.

She stood there, motionlessly, beckoning for me to come but I could not, for I had itchy legs, legs so itchy that I furiously scratched at them, dropping flecks of scaley skin onto my socks and shoes and all over the patch of gleaming hardwood floor that just hours ago was the scene of so much gaity and laughter.

Mu Ha Ha Ha

Mu Ha Ha Ha

It was a dark and stormy night

It was a dark and stormy night, far in the north of the Rockies. The lumbermen sat around the campfire, and the foreman said, "Tell us a story, Bill." And Bill did tell us a story. And this is what Bill said:

"It was a dark and stormy night, far in the north of the Rockies. The lumbermen sat around the campfire, and the foreman said, 'Tell us a story, Bill.' And Bill did tell us a story. And this is what Bill said:

"It was a dark and stormy night, far in the north of the Rockies...."

2000 winners: Father of Pet Rock pens prize schlock (Annual Contest for Bad Fiction)
2001 winners: Woman rewarded for her stinky prose

Submission for shortest war time novel(lette).

"Sergeant Omar, dedicated taliban squad leader, had dug his fighting position facing Mecca; the Ghurkas attacked from Nepal..."

fin

I'm telling my mommy on you !

The dank opening lurked of molding milk substance, milked oh so well from that object of much abuse on these steppes of dust and grind and rock, so barren as to assault one's eyes-but the sense, the smell, passed quickly now as the bearded one passed by, destroying the pleasing scent derived from goat, the stench filling and whafting upwards from the black abyss of stone, filling the smoke diluted air and drifting to the black voids above! oh but to see it, to smell it, as the air now fills with another scent, black, dark, smoke, of dust and grit born on the wind, the backdraft of flashing past, close now, and closing fast, but yet, charged with brute might and here, now, a flare of light...!

Enough is enough! I got the damn shakes now !

The rain came down like torrents of water in a flushed toilet. He walked slowly up the long driveway. The sound of the dank leaves underfoot reminded him of the years he spent in Seattle walking up long driveways.

"I hope she's there," he thought, "and wearing her bodice."

Diagnosis of your problem, Sam, you've got psoriasis.

I am thinking... (argh!!!).

It's no use using the old "stark and dormy" jokes, knights, all that. I have to think again....(argh!!!).

Palpitating with pleasure, she lay sweating on the marble slab while the fudge batter was being mixed, not knowing that the cook had just been released from San Quentin and he wasn't thinking about a chocolate tatoo on her left buttock, but something far, far worse, something really stork and darmy.

Sorry, meant to ping Topaz

Oh...and by the way...

BOO!

Highlight above text...tee-hee...

It was a dark and stormy night...

Now I am positive that if you look hard enough into the archives of FR you can find anything!

That did it, I'm going into the woods looking for the Blair Witch.

It was an awful yet wonderous sight. A 300 pound wheel of golden cheddar.