Last year I stumbled upon a place where bad first impressions are not only welcomed but honored. This year, I’m delighted to return and celebrate the 2024 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (motto: Where “www” means “wretched writers welcome).

What? You’ve never heard of this prestigious competition? Well, Friday the 13th seems an appropriate day for this post, as it is a bit of a horror show.

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 2024 Grand Prize winner is certainly worthy of the acclimation, rising from 6300 submissions to “the top of our (steaming) pile.”

“She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.”

Lawrence Person, Austin, TX

Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton and his marvelously awful opening to his 1830 novel Paul Clifford is, as I mentioned, the inspiration for this (ahem) prestigious award. “It was a dark and stormy night” is only the beginning.

“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.”

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There was also a Grand Panjandrum’s Special Award this year, which probably came about because the judges had a difficult decision when choosing the “best” of this year’s entries.

“Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose.”

Joel Phillips, West Trenton, NJ

And some of the Dishonorable Mentions in the separate categories are pretty damn awful. Take this one (please) from the Adventure group:

“It had seemed a good idea at the time, the first night of my two-week all-inclusive vacation, spent with an affable stranger in a tapas bar oiled by an excess of Corona Extra and tequila shots, but now, in fancy dress holding a red cape, under a pitiless noonday sun, while 1000 pounds of snorting horned beefsteak eyed me malevolently, hoofing a hole in the dirt, the packed spectators oléing for all their worth, I, a junior sales rep in kitchen utensils from Milwaukee, wasn’t so sure.”

David Hynes, Bromma, Sweden

There was even a Dishonorable Mention “winner” from my hometown in the Dark & Stormy category:

“It’s a dark and stormy night, ladies and gentlemen, just the perfect atmosphere for the Monsters’ Ball, and look, here comes Mr. and Mrs. Dracula, both looking quite debonair and mysterious, and there’s Frank, the big guy himself, his neck bolts glinting during the lightning flashes, but I do have one piece of bad news and that is we probably won’t be seeing the werewolf tonight because, after all, it is a dark and stormy night.”

Randy Blanton, Murfreesboro, TN

Uggh. And the winner in the Romance category also went all-out to create a truly horrible opening line:

“If broken hearts were made of simple syrup, and shattered dreams were made from white rum, and agony and despair came from ¾ ounce of lime juice, freshly squeezed, and three mint leaves respectively, then Mary Lou just served up a mojito cocktail straight from the ninth circle of hell when she told Ricky the baby wasn’t his.”

Tony Buccella, Allegany, NY

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

I know a number of authors who would probably make a real splash in this competition, but I won’t call them out by name. Heck, 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