The Bulwer Lytton Awards

[Cerys]

For some reading around the subject, here's a bit about the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, named in honour of this sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." ...from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Paul Clifford:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulwer-Lytton_Fiction_Contest

That particular contest - while fun - does seem to get a bit wordy, so I think I prefer its little brother, The Lyttle Lytton Contest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyttle_Lytton_Contest

...Essentially a version of the same thing, but with a 30-word limit on entries. Winners of the Lyttle Lytton include

Because they had not repented, the angel stabbed the unrepentant couple thirteen times, with its sword.

John, surfing, said to his mother, surfing beside him, 'How do you like surfing?'

With honourable mentions going to:

Jennifer stood there, quietly ovulating.

In anticipation, John licked his own lips.

It was just like Jack The Ripper, only, this time, Jack was a she, and possibly some form of time-traveller.

Michael had always wanted to lactate.

This story is a murder mystery — the mystery... of a murder.

"Crime," declared the police captain, "is everywhere, crime, crime!"

I know who the murderer is, Kevin blogged.

I knew it was called salsa dancing, but phew!

and I love this one:

Ah, poetic Paris: with its pâtés and beaujolais, tiramisu and au jus.

Tips from that contest's website:

So: that, basically. Yes I have ripped the idea off wholesale, but I've not seen it on this site before, so why not? And keep them nice and punchy, eh? I think we should learn from the lessons of the six-word eXtreme short storieZ, and stick to the Lyttle-Lytton limit of sentences under 30 words long. And you know, those examples are all novel first lines, but as I said, you don't have to stick to that. We just have to get the idea across that the subsequent work is going to be a complete disaster. Intentionally funny won't cut it - not here, at least. It's so much better if this shit seems sincere. So, your seemingly-sincere insipid incipits, s'il vous plaît.

Campbell roared into Scotland, shrugging off the locals' horrible insults that his massive scorch marks had created. 

Faralathanthalasalariel yawned, stretching her sinuous elven torso in the rays of the glorious twin suns (one large, one small), and wondered what the fierce clanging of the dasathanel bells augured.

"So some rich Northerner is shagging little girls and stitching swans into their backs, right?"

Burton sat, breathing spectacularly in his big armchair, thinking, "Yes, today is the day I shall rob a bank."

"Oh God!", thought Michael. Or he would have, had he not been a Shetland pony, and therefore presumably without any concept of religion. Or thought processes in the English language. Or any human language for that matter.

I had hated unsolved murders ever since by-the-book police bumbling had led to my own mother's unsolved murder 15 years ago...

It was a car that had never been in a crash until now, and today was no exception.

James had sold his Ford Fiesta 1.1 Fresco for £500 to a man wearing a wig.

It was a pleasant enough Thursday: I couldn't possibly have known that my clarinet teacher would go on to rob me of my anal virginity.

Life's a lot like cricket, isn't it?

In the corridors of power, people often forget the important work done by the cleaners of those very corridors (of power).

Cecil was a proud, vain man - little did he know he would shortly be facing a come-uppance of some sort.

Janice - the comely, fifty-something Morrison's meat counter girl - was giving me her seductive look again.

Old Mister Mitchellblake always used to say to me, 'Great data analysts are born, not made - and don't thee forget it, sirrah.'

Scene 1, a middle-class living room

KENNETH:
Sandra! Sandra! Oh God, Sandra - why are you dead, Sandra?

BONG! went the chiming clock bell: OMG, it was time2meet my m8s!!

My tale begins in rainy Islington; perhaps some fateful alignment of the stars that damp February night divined that 43 years later, I was destined to join ITV's Loose Women.

Gentle reader, privy thee: my tragic life is exactly the sort of thing you don't want to read about.

Doom metal isn't a happy genre, but my toes tapped as I nodded along to the joyous gutturals of a long-haired man who should have been named Quentin, yet somehow wasn't.

There was no mistaking it: the paperclip was there.

It was a Tuesday when the Anglican minister fell on my roof.

They say you shouldn't wear spots with stripes, but I was feeling lucky.

I don't know if I should tell you this, but the typewriter is here and a little voice is squeaking out through the holes in the Emmenthal that lies mouldering on the window-sill, so here goes.

Piggy the pig was a pig. He lived in a pigsty. He rolled in his own ordure. He was killed for meat.


Dan McGrew looked at his trusty pistol, Edwina, and sank another finger of rye. "That's it," he grizzled, "I've killed me my last varmint. From now on, it's nothin' but netball for old Dan McGrew."


There's a lot more to wet-wipes than you think. Or at least – some more, beyond 'they are wet and they wipe'.


We haven't had a limerick thread in ages.

Let me preface this - my 1297-page magnum opus - by simply saying, 'I'm not racist - but...'

As the large white ship left the busy port, Captain Brad Summers wondered aloud whether this cruise would be an eventful one.

"Even in the United States of Europe in 2765" Zax Quazox thought to himself "the Foodmatic 5000 still never gets the eggs quite runny enough."

"As she walked down the sun-warmed cobbled streets of Little Wynsynshyre, the peacfeul English village she had known and loved all her life, Jill's thoughts turned to Melvin - where he was right now, whether he ever thought of her and himself and what might have been, and whether he had yet found the Crystal Monkey which would open the ancient Temple of Fate banishing evil forevermore.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush goes the saying. Perhaps not though, if it, as this one was, is covered in excrement.

The two well educated lovers were entangled on the bed, their bodies united, but in their thoughts they were with another, that other was Big Becky.

The old grandfather clock ticked calmly, indifferent to the explosions before it.

All the 50 hard years Frank Bluecollar had toiled for MegaFactory Corp, working his honest fingers to the bone, and this is his reward; a lousy fishing rod.

Michael's window was lightly frosted, leaving the pane covered with a thin, synthetic fog which rendered the whole landscape outside the grey of the interior of a long uncleaned dishwasher.

AS the caramel-based hobgoblin stole into dawn's lazy crack, Roger sighed a defeated sigh that knew that that was that- the world would need a new horizon.

ACT I SCENE I: Steven Seagal appears onstage on a big pink Barbie rocket.

Thomas, who was a five foot stocky banker who'd lost his wife to a killer, smiled.

The old whore's teeth would have reminded Elmer of the rocks of Stone Henge if he'd ever been to England, which he hadn't.

               Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of
               trade routes to outlaying star systems is in dispute.  Hoping
               to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships,
               the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the
               small planet of Naboo.

I want to tell you about the good times, back when John Major was King.

"Oh, not another holiday in Mudbridge-By-Sea!" wailed Lissy, "Nothing exciting ever happens there! You'd never meet a fairy in Mudbridge-On-Sea, and if you did you unquestionably wouldn't fly away with it to a Magic Island where evil wizards are keeping the unicorns enslaved for their silky manes and we'd destroy them all with a happy song and restore the fairy king to his throne. Never in Mudbridge-By-Sea!"
    "Well you can fucking stay here then," Mum said.

Dammit. The wasp on my glass of drink reminded me of myself, but much smaller.

Miranda the monkey was much to scared to go and play with Kevin the crocodile. So she went for a walk in the forest instead and soon came to a lake where Shubhankar Perzid Farsi the shark was splashing happily.

On the third ring I pulled out of the lady and took the Chief Inspector's urgent call, mentally dressing myself and choosing a gun and an apology.

Monday curled up and died, immediately resurrecting as Tuesday; newborn, slimey, and presenting me with a beautiful day for a mad nautical adventure.


No one had spoke the words, but we all silently agreed with them and dressed accordingly.

I arrogantly shouted at my intestines; my sonic advantage would triumph in this battle of inner pain and verbicuffs, surely?

There was disease all over her knickers. 'AIDS!' shouted Frank the butcher as loudly as an ox pulling a rabbit, 'run for your hills!'.

I've been doing the drugs but I don't like the drugs or the drugs don't like me, I love 'em, but the drugs, the drugs, been doing 'em so long, they've got me in trouble with the pigs they have and anyway the drugs, man, the different drugs, the drugs.

The devil, troubled the slowly-sinking Chiltern hills, lashes out, pulling in High Wycombe and scorching its bus precinct, angering six locals into starting a thousand year war that continues thus...

Blood, blood, blood: a difficult stain to remove ...oh, hang on, sorry - beetroot: a difficult stain to remove...

It is the year 3000: not much has changed (but we live underwater).

Ah, Warhammer - surrogate parent, cruel mistress, lover... and, dare I say it, friend?

Now: this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down, and I'd like to take a minute - just sit right there - I'll tell you how I became West Kent's most celebrated Will Smith impersonator.

Time. Time time. Ticking, tocking time; ticking and tocking towards tomorrow. Tick! Tock? Time. Time.

"It looks like she was dragged by her hair along this path, raped and then carved up for the foxes to feast on at night".
"What's does 'feast' mean Big Ears?" asked Noddy, throwing a ball for bumpy dog.

Manfred had one last virtual hill to cover on his exercise bike so he pulled out all the stops and started playing it as it wasn't an exercise bike at all; it was an organ.

'That's not purple that's blue you fanny-sucking retard!' cried Lord Sminsby-Poltroon to his butch lesbionic interior designer.

"Thrance ith vewy thar awaee" said Mitchell because he has been licking glue again, because he is zany, what he meant was "France is very far away", but his tounge had been stuck by the glue, which he had licked.

IT IS Leicester's gay winter of nineteen eighty-six, and a fortnight's snow lays paralyzed like frozen white mustard: basting the craven, bored land, waiting to be sizzled, and to be stirred.

The jazz musician lounged about his small New York apartment, as if he were a character in one of John Cassavetes films.

The skies pissed drama, hinting at reconciliation but always ending up getting torn in two by jagged arrows of lightning. An electrical storm; a wet finger in a socket.

The ending, when it came, was both succinct and straightforward.

Linda sank into the soft leather of the large chauffeur driven car with a sigh of pleasure. She crossed her legs which were clad in 15 denier sheer nylon stockings, smoothed out her navy blue knee length skirt and adjusted her perky navy blue cap with pale pink piping. She looked out of the window at the scenery and happily wondered what kind of passengers she would be welcoming onboard Concorde that day.

The one thing I've learnt being a private eye is that you have neither panoramic peripheral vision nor any claim to a state pension.

Three things were important to Mr Trout: sex, sex and sex; oh, and rhubarb, the gently phallic green and redness of which reminded him of sex.

"Sing!" I said, and the little cunt did so.

Sophie had watched her youngest die at the hands of the nazis, and now had to suffer the further torment of identifying her amongst hundreds of others, all of them piled up in the pit like mothercare sponges in an argos children's tub.

You really don't want to know what happened to Mr Harris last night.

"Eyy! Youse fackin rainy bastards yeh" screamed Johnny McAlpine as the winds lashed his cottage, built seven hundred years ago on Uist and constructed out of harsh, cold, mortuary stone, warmed only by the smoke which rose through the original chimney.

Maisie dipped a curtsey and watched with relief as the master stalked off down the hallway. Next time he would not be so lenient and her pert bottom cheeks tingled at the thought of her next punishment.

She had been beautiful once, but years of being battered by the cruel West Yorkshire winds had left her face crumpled and ugly, like a big knee.

The Emperor was suffused with the wisdom that comes from years of silent contemplation, the constant, infinitesimal sifting and measuring of thoughts against ongoing and changing beliefs; yet he could still rarely pass through a door without getting his ears caught.

January 1990 was the most boring month of my life, it came in with a whimper and went out with a wimpier whimper.

His hair was black; his eyes were black; his clothes were black; his skin was black; it was only his luminescent monocle that prevented Maisie Moncrieff PI from losing track of him altogether, a failing that would, if she had, have spelled certain destruction for Blowhardt's Beneficial Bowel Embrocation, (patent pending).

It was a beautiful day in the enchanted wood. Moonface picked at his teeth, removing all that was left of Silky, and wondered why the children didn't visit anymore. No matter, he wasn't about to let it upset him; the Land of the Dead was due at the top of the Faraway tree any moment now.

"Help!" I called. "HELP!" But no one heard...so no one helped. I was going to be stuck in this cubicle for a long time.

I know what you're thinking. How come I'm King of the Warlocks, married to Randorrr the Elfwitch, and magic is real and everything? Well - let me tell you...

Jake, 30, turned on his heel (just repaired) looked at his foe (ginger haired) and, savage Harlem pimp that he was, glared.

Adrian Chiles had had a busy day.

I can't stand name-droppers - as I was saying to my good friend Toyah Wilcox last week.

"O, when will this fucking page end?" asked Donald.

Right.  Carry on as you were.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

My sphincter trembled like an Ethopian long distance runner cleaning up after the Exxon Valdez disaster.

[gigolo aunts aren't gentlemen]

Everything changed that day, it being the start of British Summertime.

[the midnight watch baboon]

We tumbled away from the battered cattle that had hidden us from the gargantuan spaceship seeking the elimination of all humanity, and watched it glide arrogantly through the cold night air, towards Dudley

[Cerys]

It was the day when I decided that, all things considered, I would hack my next door neighbour to death with the bit of metal that abraded my cock each and every time I pissed through his letterbox, leaving me scarpering bloodily.

[sproggy]

"Testicles!" he bellowed in response to a rather annoying question posed by Dr Ernie Mabuto the Nigerian Ambassador, and so the diplomatic destruction of the free world began in earnest.

[Lookalike Mark Chapman]

Hooray, I've got my own spin-off thread! In many ways, Cerys, you are the Ianto Jones to my Captain Jack Harkness. I heartily endorse this thread - provided you all still visit the ongoing Friday Fun thread, that is. So! First lines, eh?

*erm*

This novel is a perfect palindrome - sadly this means it makes sense until about the middle, whereupon it turns into complete gibberish.

[mook]

Her top set fell from her gums with an audible clack, and her eyes brimed with tears as she held the cup to her co-star's pimply buttocks and waited ...

Sorry I'm going off topic.

[Lookalike Mark Chapman]

Hi hi. This year's Lyttle Lytton Contest ("Your task is to write the beginning of an imaginary novel. Your goal is to make it hilariously bad") has been judged - write-up here - with the winner being:

The mighty frigate Indestructible rounded the Horn of Africa and lurched east'ard.

Now that's bad! As soon as you hit the name of the ship you can smell the cheap irony coming, and the "ooh, look how nautical I am!" reference to the Horn of Africa is immediately trumped by the trying-even-harder apostrophe in "east'ard."

Second place went to:

Pika ... chu, thought Pikachu.

With honourable mentions going to:

For many, surfing can be a pleasant and enjoyable pastime, if you like surfing, but not Peter.

Zamboni doubled — nay, TRIPLED over in happiness-demolishing agonies.

I have the ability to go through time, he suddenly remembered while at a bus stop near a tree.

Deep space. The silence of the void. Shh.

Jerry's wife looked forward to a romantic time with him, Jerry.

"Ooh la la!" whispered Larry in French.

Farmer John admired the golden corn, sprouting from the ground like buried treasure.

"Tectonic plates fascinate me," she says, her eyes swiftly darting from my eyes to the ground, and back again.

"I hope I win," thought Ernest, blinking laboriously; he was proud to represent his country in the Olympics, but "What did it all mean?"


...And from the 'found' section:

There is simply no scientific or mathematical formula that defines conservatism.
(quote from Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin)

Despite having ascended to the most powerful political office in the world, President Zachary Herney was average in height, with a slender build and narrow shoulders.
(Deception Point, Dan Brown)

"Caramba!" exclaimed Diego de Fonseca, "a cucaracha has fallen onto the tortillas of my wife!"
(The Confusion, Neal Stephenson)


Can you do 'better'?

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

High Lord Xarquar XII of the Voltrix galaxy sat malevolently, sipping his lukewarm alien-drink and bouncing planets against the wall with his opposable knees.

[actwithoutwords]

"Will you marry me?" he exclaimed, turning down the volume, but not so far that they couldn't still hear Ant and Dec's cheerful banter.

[Cerys]

High Lord Xarquar XII of the Voltrix galaxy sat malevolently, sipping his lukewarm alien-drink and bouncing planets against the wall with his opposable knees.

Dammit, you're too good at this.

------------------------------------------------

Aarinyana strained at the bonds, shrinking from the gem-encrusted lashes of the reptiloid Hrganks, and cursed the day she had left Splarigan V.

[the midnight watch baboon]

It was a wet, frigid night in turn-of-the-century Tiptree that we discovered our passion for salted popcorn.

W

[gmoney]

A fresh case was what Buck Westfire needed more than anything right now, and the flame haired dame on the other side of his desk had a juicy one.

[actwithoutwords]

The clock struck 12. Dong. 1994 was finally over.

[the midnight watch baboon]

The serial killer brought farmer number five's limp, stubborn body back to his kill-flat, carefully removing his wellies (for the prey's terrain was muddy), and the farmer's, and then got to work, slicing and hacking, and whistling a jaunty murderer's tune.

[Cerys]

There were three ways to dissect an aubergine, decided Morty, opting for the least popular.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

As Bud Westbury, superagent of the world-infamous Diamond 6, ran from the Colombian henchmen, jumping over chainlink fences as if they were puddles and turning occasionally to shoot back at the bastards with his handgun, he thought to himself "That's the last time I try to twiddle the knob of a safe and the nipples of a hot Latina moll at the same time".

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

Double post, but these are great fun.


Alice noticed the man, about six foot six (or one hundred and ninety four centimetres, for Alice was French), curled her honey-blonde hair with a finger (exquisitely manicured, marred only by a charming wart), uncrossed her legs and farted.

[the midnight watch baboon]

The murderer tapped F5, hoping; wanting.

[Cerys]

Susie-Lou skipped merrily along the flowery, sweet-scented path, bubbling with innocent mirth and joy at the simple brilliance of being alive, and in no way expected the appearance of the evil werehedgehog who suddenly made all her merry bubbling mirth and joy absolutely groundless, as well as non-existent, by killing her stone dead with its terrifyingly prickly prickles.

[Blaaah]

Doc Savage had his morning Wispa, and then he walked up the road and got a pickled egg from the chippie.

[the midnight watch baboon]

IT was a sharp rapping of my trusty front door, accompanied with a joyous, twice-yelled, "K N O C K !", that brought me bra-clad and beaming out of the utility room that muggy, awesome day, finding altruistic, god-bothering, lothario inventor Suds Cornwall, leant against my laughably insufficient porch at a meretricious angle, a biological twinkling in his conker-brown eyes.

[ThickAndCreamy]

"Oh no", I thought, as I stood over the prostitute I had just murdered, where am I going to get my sex now?

[Cerys]

This is only the first line in a very, very, very complex book, so pay attention or you might get lost.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

IT was a sharp rapping of my trusty front door, accompanied with a joyous, twice-yelled, "K N O C K !", that brought me bra-clad and beaming out of the utility room that muggy, awesome day, finding altruistic, god-bothering, lothario inventor Suds Cornwall, leant against my laughably insufficient porch at a meretricious angle, a biological twinkling in his conker-brown eyes.

You are superb.

The man handed a sandwich to his wife, Betsy Flowerchild, while himself, Henry Flowerchild, opened the steely door of the lab with the other hand - "This" he said proudly, waxy moustache bristling, "is my latest creation", indicating the big robot.

[purlieu]

My story starts with a cornish pasty, a handheld mirror, and the inescapable feeling that something was about to happen.



"Get to work, John, we only have seventeen hours to save the human race."



It was the longest night of the year; rain seemed to fall upwards, back into the clouds; a clock ticked, as if silently; and Alex sat and wept in the corner of the living room, long castrated of life or joy, and remembered it was twelve years to the second that Carmichael had stolen her tuba.



"Come out Harry Walker, we've got this drugs manufacturing warehouse disguised as a disused warehouse surrounded!"



Zarncardle, Lord High Emperor of the Bumpaloid cluster, commander of the Great Vastrovian Armies and caretaker of Plip, snorted dustily.



As Kenny looked up, possibly for the last time, and certainly not for the first, he couldn't help notice his assailant wasn't wearing any pants.

[Cerys]

The moon was indisputably pink as we began our long trek to the only shop in town that sold tripe.

[the midnight watch baboon]

Africa. Tuesday. Lion O'Clock.

[ThickAndCreamy]

As I wandered through the streets of Scunthorpe I could only think, it's no Milton Keynes, is it?