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It was a Dark and Stormy Night...
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is basically a writing contest to write the opening sentence to the worst novel possible. It's also known as the "It was a dark and stormy night" contest. This years winners were just announced.
Grand prize:
On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained. -Ms. Rephah Berg
The graphic crime-scene photo that stared up at Homicide Inspector Chuck Venturi from the center of his desk was not a pretty picture, though it could have been, Chuck used, had it only been shot in soft focus with a shutter speed of 1/125 second at f 5.6 or so. -Ms. Rephah Berg
Detective Driscoll had fallen off the wagon like a frozen turkey from a Goodwill helicopter and, like a talking elephant reunited with his old circus buddies after 50 years, he reminisced about the most memorable collars of his career -- and he guffawed so hard that he fell off the barstool like another turkey from another helicopter as he recollected the time he arrested a mime for shoplifting and had to say "You have a right to remain silent . . ." -Vince Lucid
As her tears blurred his receding figure into a ghostly memory,she realized how thoroughly he had broken her heart, like a steamroller grinding the shards of a perfume bottle into splintered, dusty oblivion, at least as much as one can "break" a squishy organ composed of 70% water by weight; heck, let's be honest, you can no more break a heart than you can perform an appendectomy with a spoon, which is perhaps a better analogy for her pain in the first place. -Phil Currier
The controls looked normal--the beeping thing was beeping, the humming thing was humming, the blue number display was displaying blue numbers, the yellow number display was displaying yellow numbers, everything seemed OK, but the redundancy of this interplanetary trip left Col. Mountain feeling troubled, troubled like a beeping thing not beeping, or a humming thing not humming, or a blue number display not displaying blue numbers, or a yellow number display not displaying yellow numbers; nothing felt right. -Kevin Kriss
The sun beat like a molten hammer upon the sand that Jasper trudged upon, scorching his bare skin, baking his eyeballs dry, boiling his brains in his skull, and bleaching his hair to that lovely yellowy shade that perfectly matched his taupe shirt, the one that he could wear with either his suede jacket or the denim one. -Geoff Blackwell
As he gazed over at his aged and sickly wife lying at his side, he remembered the woman he had once known - the vibrant exciting beauty with a heart of gold and a head full of dreams - and instantly wished he had married her instead. -Julia Fernandez
Throwing his moccasined feet forward with the delicate assurance of a skilled tracker, Silver Cloud Stevens paused to cautiously swing a flaxen braid over his manly right shoulder, and in that brief pause became intensely and intoxicatingly aware of the one sixtieth Navajo blood surging through his veins and steering him toward the grey SUV he had earlier nestled somewhere in the vast metallic foliage of the mall parking lot; his instincts whispered "Row J, near the Cinnabon." -Brook Sprague
"Uncle Albert!" shrieked the chubby-faced cherub of a niece who dashed excitedly through the parlor, leaping toward the arms of her favorite relative, until stopped abruptly by the sliding glass door she had failed to notice, leaving her for a moment curiously suspended in space like a happy, golden-curled pancake with special anti-gravity powers, before slipping slowly to the floor. -Ian Monteith
Grand prize:
On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained. -Ms. Rephah Berg
The graphic crime-scene photo that stared up at Homicide Inspector Chuck Venturi from the center of his desk was not a pretty picture, though it could have been, Chuck used, had it only been shot in soft focus with a shutter speed of 1/125 second at f 5.6 or so. -Ms. Rephah Berg
Detective Driscoll had fallen off the wagon like a frozen turkey from a Goodwill helicopter and, like a talking elephant reunited with his old circus buddies after 50 years, he reminisced about the most memorable collars of his career -- and he guffawed so hard that he fell off the barstool like another turkey from another helicopter as he recollected the time he arrested a mime for shoplifting and had to say "You have a right to remain silent . . ." -Vince Lucid
As her tears blurred his receding figure into a ghostly memory,she realized how thoroughly he had broken her heart, like a steamroller grinding the shards of a perfume bottle into splintered, dusty oblivion, at least as much as one can "break" a squishy organ composed of 70% water by weight; heck, let's be honest, you can no more break a heart than you can perform an appendectomy with a spoon, which is perhaps a better analogy for her pain in the first place. -Phil Currier
The controls looked normal--the beeping thing was beeping, the humming thing was humming, the blue number display was displaying blue numbers, the yellow number display was displaying yellow numbers, everything seemed OK, but the redundancy of this interplanetary trip left Col. Mountain feeling troubled, troubled like a beeping thing not beeping, or a humming thing not humming, or a blue number display not displaying blue numbers, or a yellow number display not displaying yellow numbers; nothing felt right. -Kevin Kriss
The sun beat like a molten hammer upon the sand that Jasper trudged upon, scorching his bare skin, baking his eyeballs dry, boiling his brains in his skull, and bleaching his hair to that lovely yellowy shade that perfectly matched his taupe shirt, the one that he could wear with either his suede jacket or the denim one. -Geoff Blackwell
As he gazed over at his aged and sickly wife lying at his side, he remembered the woman he had once known - the vibrant exciting beauty with a heart of gold and a head full of dreams - and instantly wished he had married her instead. -Julia Fernandez
Throwing his moccasined feet forward with the delicate assurance of a skilled tracker, Silver Cloud Stevens paused to cautiously swing a flaxen braid over his manly right shoulder, and in that brief pause became intensely and intoxicatingly aware of the one sixtieth Navajo blood surging through his veins and steering him toward the grey SUV he had earlier nestled somewhere in the vast metallic foliage of the mall parking lot; his instincts whispered "Row J, near the Cinnabon." -Brook Sprague
"Uncle Albert!" shrieked the chubby-faced cherub of a niece who dashed excitedly through the parlor, leaping toward the arms of her favorite relative, until stopped abruptly by the sliding glass door she had failed to notice, leaving her for a moment curiously suspended in space like a happy, golden-curled pancake with special anti-gravity powers, before slipping slowly to the floor. -Ian Monteith