First impressions — whether in meetings, personal encounters, books, dates, lectures, or reports — set the tone for what follows. Bad first impressions can be overcome, but in the vast majority of encounters we tend to make up our minds quickly and stick to our initial perceptions.

Yet some first impressions are so bad they are deserving of a prize. Which is why I was delighted to see the 2023 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (motto: Where “www” means “wretched writers welcome).

You’ve never heard of this prestigious competition? Well, let’s enlighten you. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has been around since 1982, challenging participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written. The “whimsical literary competition honors Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with ‘It was a dark and stormy night.'”

When writing a paper about Sir Edward, Professor Scott Rice of San Jose State University came up with the idea of challenging writers to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels. “Dark and Stormy” has its own category, but contestants can also enter lines for adventure, historical fiction, romance, and more.

And the 2023 Grand Prize winner is a doozy!

She was a beautiful woman; more specifically she was the kind of beautiful woman who had an hourlong skincare routine that made her look either ethereal or like a glazed donut, depending on how attracted to her you were.   

Maya Pasic, New York, NY

I was also rather taken with the winner in the “Adventure” category.

The man squinted his eyes as the blistering cold winds battered his rugged face, his eyes darting about, desperately hoping, daring to dream that amidst the frozen wasteland, he would find the last Klondike Bar that he had hidden in his freezer.      

Oliver Mauser, Jacksonville, FL

You can and should read all the winners and “dishonorable mentions.” If you’re like me you’ll snicker, laugh, groan, guffaw, and more.

You may even want to try your hand at writing your own. But just remember, it was Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton who also wrote …

The pen is mightier than the sword.

So, it is a high bar.

More to come …

DJB

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay