Being the best at worst first lines

[Libby Drew]

The Bulwer-Lytton Contest results are in for 2009. Bulwer-Lytton, also known as 'the dark and stormy night' competition, challenges people to write the opening line for a fictional novel...and to make it bad...but enjoyably bad. Longer is not necessarily better, but it seems they do tend to favour longer entries.

 

I think this is my favorite from this year's winners:

 

The serrated butter knife tossed capriciously onto the 38th Street sidewalk amid the detritus of Salem cigarette butts and a Mentos box was devoid of zero trans fat margarine, but glinted invitingly in the sunlight nonetheless, poised for the opportunity to be repurposed to cut up a Snuggie, and Vladimir took it.

 

 

Some of the winners made me laugh a lot, others not so much. I thought we might be able to do a bit better around here.

 

Anybody interested in giving it a go?

[Krista]

I usually suck at opening paragraphs/lines.. but yeah that one was bad.. lol.

[Libby Drew]

I usually suck at opening paragraphs/lines.. but yeah that one was bad.. lol.

 

Well, entrants are challenged to write the worst sentence they can possibly manage for the contest. All I know is, I bet some of these people had a blast crafting them.