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Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!

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Jude
Post subject: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Wed 30 Jun , 2010 12:33 pm
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The results of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton contest are in! For those of you who don't know, the Bulwer-Lytton contest is for writers everywhere to compete for the worst opening sentence of a novel. The contest is named in honour of the author who opened his 1830 novel with "It was a dark and stormy night" (lampooned for years by Snoopy in "Peanuts").

There are many Canadians in this year's collection of finalists, including soldier and author Paul Chafe, who opens his hypothetical romance novel thusly:
Quote:
'Trent, I love you,' Fiona murmured, and her nostrils flared at the faint trace of her lover's masculine scent, sending her heart racing and her mind dreaming of the life they would live together, alternating sumptuous world cruises with long, romantic interludes in the mansion on his private island, alone together except for the maids, the cook, the butler, and Dirk and Rafael, the hard-bodied pool boys.
Go Paul! :horse:

More examples in this CBC article: Bad fiction contest cites Ont., N.S. writers

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Wed 30 Jun , 2010 1:03 pm
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:LMAO:

One of my favorites:

Winner: Fantasy Fiction

The wood nymph fairies blissfully pranced in the morning light past the glistening dewdrops on the meadow thistles by the Old Mill, ignorant of the daily slaughter that occurred just behind its lichen-encrusted walls, twin 20-ton mill stones savagely ripping apart the husks of wheat seed, gleefully smearing the starchy entrails across their dower granite faces in unspeakable botanical horror and carnage – but that’s not our story; ours is about fairies!

Rick Cheeseman


Winner: Vile Puns

It was a risky production unlike any mounted prior on the Met stage, the orchestra first imitating the perpetually beating heart of a man walled-in while in pursuit of wine , and then a soprano singing the plaintive aria of a barely alive woman stuffed up a chimney as her ancestral home was destroyed; however, it certainly was Opera Poe.

Amy Torchinsky

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elfshadow
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Sat 03 Jul , 2010 3:35 am
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Rick Cheeseman was quite appropriately named. :LMAO:


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vison
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Sat 03 Jul , 2010 4:43 am
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Divine, as always.

I dream of rising to that level of cheesiness. :)

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Estel Dúnadan
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Mon 12 Jul , 2010 10:20 am
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*groan* Can I slap them with a salmon?

Kudos to the people who invented the competition; it's funny!

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Tue 20 Sep , 2011 1:44 am
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The 2011 results are out now too!

Here's one of my favourites:
Quote:
They called her The Cat, because she made love the way she fought, rolling rapidly across the floor in a big, blurry ball of shrieking hair, fury, and dander, which usually solicited a “Shut up!” and flung shoe from one of the neighbours, and left her exhilarated lover with serious patchy bald spots and the occasional nicked ear.

Lisa Kluber
Ooh... and this one:
Quote:
Dawn crept up like the panther on the gazelle, except it was light, not dark like a panther, and a panther, though quiet, could never be as silent as the light of dawn, so really the analogy doesn’t hold up well, as cool as it sounds, but it still is a great way to begin a story; just not necessarily this particular one.

Warren Blair

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Tue 20 Sep , 2011 3:20 am
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Well, the winner was brilliant. :LMAO:

But I really liked this one:
Quote:
Winner: Fantasy

Within the smoking ruins of Keister Castle, Princess Gwendolyn stared in horror at the limp form of the loyal Centaur who died defending her very honor; “You may force me to wed,” she cried at the leering and victorious Goblin King, “but you’ll never be half the man he was.”

Terri Daniel

Seattle, WA
Quote:
As she downed the last Dixie cup of Listerine and let every drop of its 21.6 percent alcohol content hit her like an icy mint anti-cavity brickbat, Karen squinted at the breasts dangling like two electrocuted ospreys from the powerline of her heart and, with a despondency born of a thousand nights spent gaining a decent skill level at internet mahjong, wondered how she and they had all three sunk so low.

Anna Springfield

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vison
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Tue 20 Sep , 2011 3:46 am
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Ah, lovely. Just lovely. Thanks ever so!!!!

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Tue 22 Sep , 2015 6:18 pm
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2015 winners!

The winner:
Quote:
Seeing how the victim's body, or what remained of it, was wedged between the grill of the Peterbilt 389 and the bumper of the 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT, officer "Dirk" Dirksen wondered why reporters always used the phrase "sandwiched" to describe such a scene since there was nothing appetizing about it, but still, he thought, they might have a point because some of this would probably end up on the front of his shirt.

Joel Phillips, West Trenton, NJ
Also:
Quote:
Shortly after that interfering do-gooder Snow White had introduced Sneezy to non-drowsy antihistamines, he had to change his name to Brian, where he then left the mines with Ray (formerly Sleepy) who was now a caffeine addict and Bob (formerly Grumpy) who was on 100 milligrams of Prozac a day, and Doc whom Snow pointed out had never actually graduated from medical school and was being sued for malpractice--oh how he despised that high and mighty ho.

Hwei Oh, Sydney, Australia

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Tue 22 Sep , 2015 9:01 pm
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I like this one:

“My name is Vangir," the stout dwarf announced, "son of Valdir, son of Tolfdir, son of Torsson, heir to the dwarf kingdom of Darag-Vur, King of the Under-Folk, ring-giver, dragon-slayer, M.D., DDS. — Austin Stollhaus, Louisville, KY

And this one:

He was an old man who fished alone on a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish, but in the meantime had perfected his killer mojito and opened a beachside bar where patrons now stood three deep waiting to taste his magic at four U.S. bucks a pop. — Ray Clarke, Concord CA

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RELStuart
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Sun 27 Sep , 2015 3:17 am
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Quote:
Wilbur's passionate kisses sent a warm shiver down Eugenia's tender spine and made the coarse hair on her knuckles erect. — David Pepper, Torrance, CA
:LMAO:

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Wed 18 Nov , 2015 6:51 pm
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Bad sex awards 2015

Some of these are hilariously bad, and some are just bad :D

Unlike the Bulwer-Lytton awards, I suspect that the authors here weren't actually trying to get onto this list.

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Wed 18 Nov , 2015 7:53 pm
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"bulbous salutation"? I think there's an ICD-10 code for that.

Actually, one of the contenders had the right idea. For most writers," It was very good" is probably the safest place to stop.

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yovargas
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Wed 18 Nov , 2015 11:07 pm
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Quote:
Her mouth was intensely ovoid
How does that work, exactly, I wonder.


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Wed 18 Nov , 2015 11:29 pm
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yovargas wrote:
Quote:
Her mouth was intensely ovoid
How does that work, exactly, I wonder.
I believe that one is ICD-10 code Q38.0

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Tue 01 Dec , 2015 10:21 pm
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And the Bad Sex competition has a winner!
Quote:
The judges cited a scene between relay runner Ezra and his girlfriend Eliza in which the couple "rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation."

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Jude
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Mon 16 Dec , 2019 7:58 pm
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The 2019 results are in!
The winner, Maxwell Archer wrote:
Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago.
Also, this:
Arlen Feldman wrote:
Driven from the sea by pollution, Aglaope the Siren found an economy apartment in New York City with the hope of luring the big city buses to their doom, but to her dismay she found that her song was drowned out by police cars, fire trucks and jackhammers, except for one joyous day when she was fairly sure that she caused a skateboarder to crash into a light pole.
Jeremy Das wrote:
Zajaxian Planetary Law required that war, if it must be fought, be fought not with bombs, bullets and blood, as on our own primitive Earth, but with serried banks of immensely powerful mainframe computers, even though they were bulky to carry and unwieldy to throw.
David Meech wrote:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – though any decent statistician might net those two factors together and conclude that things were fairly average all round.

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Mon 16 Dec , 2019 8:38 pm
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:LMAO: :LMAO: :LMAO:

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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Tue 17 Dec , 2019 5:57 pm
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Quote:
The High Gondonderil gazed on with horror as the Elgaborian legions marched at a single, pitiless pace into the once peaceful streets of Sar-Andrada, the capital city of the kingdom of Xanthil, located in a fantasy universe which might seem extremely confusing at present but which will doubtless make perfect sense to you, dear reader, once you realize that, like most fantasy universes, it’s basically just Tolkien’s Middle-earth with different names for things.

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LalaithUrwen
Post subject: Re: Bulwer-Lytton 2010 results!
Posted: Tue 17 Dec , 2019 8:58 pm
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:rofl:

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