"Peons of Praise"--The Author Said That

My expressions are shorter and easier to pronounce. Easily understood, too.

The latest from a book I'm proofreading:

". . . something will bare fruit." Well, there's nothing like a nekkid "pare" to get my juices flowing.

Thud.

Cornography!

A new doozy in a book I'm proofreading, which means the editor let this one slip by.

They often use brute force and could devise jury-rigged solutions on the spot.

MacGyver in a chemistry lab?

I took this off the NPR site this evening:

A Challenge: Write Worse Than This Guy

The worst of the worst. Courtesy David McKenzie
By Mark Memmott

Think it's easy to write badly? (Yes, yes, I know ... we make it look easy every day.)

Yesterday the winner of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest ("where www means 'wretched writers welcome' ") was announced. It's David McKenzie of Federal Way, Wash., who came up with this:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the Ellie May, a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."
McKenzie tells the San Jose Mercury News he sent in 20 entries to the parody contest, which San Jose State University has been staging annually since 1982. "I expected it," he says about winning.

Can you do even "worse"?

Write your own worst-possible first sentence of a novel -- in 50 words or less -- and put it in this post's comment thread. The trick is, it has to be so "bad" it's good. We'll spotlight some of the "best."

As for Bulwer-Lytton, who lived from 1803-1873, he has the distinction for being famous for some of the best lines in history (such as; "The pen is mightier than the sword") and some of the most-ridiculed ("It was a dark and stormy night.")

Or, here's an alternate challenge:

Write a "bad" introduction to a story you might hear on Morning Edition or All Things Considered. Think of a classic kind of NPR story you can have fun with.

Edgar, Thanks for the contribution. You've opened a whole new can of worms. A whole different kind of bad writing. The kinds of problems I've been dealing with are easier to fix than the kind you've presented.

I can change a wrong word choice or a garbled sentence. But how do you fix trite, dull, tired, stoopid prose? Is it fixable? Dunno. I'm glad I never had to work on such stuff.

I'm currently editing a book written by someone for whom English is not the native language. I can't figure out intended meaning many times. But I know there is one.

From a book I'm editing now. Any guesses?

But there is a descent change that the managed portfolio will surpass the indexed portfolio.

Good luck!

The entire book was like this. I was actually able to figure out the intended meaning here. Not so fortunate elsewhere.

Change two letters, and it makes sense.

But there is a decent chance that the managed portfolio will surpass the indexed portfolio.

Of course! That's why you do it and I can't.

They can't (and don't) pay you enough for this kind of stuff. How long do you stare at one sentence?

From a local design magazine:

"Delicious hand-scraped hickory hardwood floors run the gamete..."

"Complete?"

Sounds like they might have been using transcription software.

Zygote to see that house, though....

It gets better -- just pulled this from the website:

"Any man with a smidgen of testosterone left in his bones "

(That's not where it's stored, surely?)

Nice house though:

Don't you just hate it when bad writers try to be clever?

Drewdad, Read "gamut."

Eva, Yes, I hate it when bad writers try to be clever. I hate it more when bad writers try to write. And where was the editor? Proofreader? Maybe I should give this publication a call.

That's why you're the editor.