The A2K Bulwer-Lytton Contest

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This is an annual bad writing contest where entrants compose the first line of a supposed novel. The rules are:

Each entry must consist of a single sentence but you may submit as many entries as you wish. (One fellow once submitted over 3,000 entries.)

Sentences may be of any length BUT WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT ENTRIES NOT GO BEYOND 50 OR 60 WORDS, and entries must be "original".

Here's a link to some of the past entrants: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
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So, I suggest we do our own contest... here's my first entry (I'm sure you can do better): Note - they are supposed to be intentionally unintentionally funny.
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The thrum at the back and top of her head throbbed with a velocity and pointedness like a room full of vengeful, hyped-up acupuncturists.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 11 • Views: 12,035 • Replies: 27

@Mame,

Eugenia gravely flogged herself with a soggy grouper while she bathed in the putrid soup of her recently excavated ruptured septic tank.

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

Alistair knew that, if he wished hard enough, Maria would be gone, and he would be left, by himself, in the hedge maze of his soul.

0 Replies

@Mame,

Here I am again, facing the same decisions that changed the course of history so many years before.

1 Reply

As I stood gazing at the college residence halls, outlined like black tombstones against the light of the cold December moon, it was clear to me that this was, indeed, a stark and dormy night.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

Here I am again, facing the same decisions that changed the course of history so many years before.

I'm afraid to tell you this Rosborne but this sentence should be thrown out of the competition immediately! Mad

It's far too great a potential opening sentence therefore it disqualifies itself.

2 Replies

@tsarstepan,

As Jacqueline stood horizontally on her bed, sweating like a sweaty pig, she waited for the existential drift to shake the chat paradigm.

0 Replies

It was an obtuse moon, hung over the garret, like so much wash.

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He shivered in the bitter cold looking pensively at the pile of firewood stacked by the cabin door and thought wistfully of his axe, sitting on the counter of his workshop, and wondered hopefully if an electric carving knife would be able to slice off some kindling.

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@tsarstepan,

tsarstepan wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

Here I am again, facing the same decisions that changed the course of history so many years before.

I'm afraid to tell you this Rosborne but this sentence should be thrown out of the competition immediately!

It's far too great a potential opening sentence therefore it disqualifies itself.

Oops, I didn't read the instructions carefully enough. (perhaps that's a better first line) Smile

0 Replies

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

As I stood gazing at the college residence halls, outlined like black tombstones against the light of the cold December moon, it was clear to me that this was, indeed, a stark and dormy night.

No more calls, folks. I think we've got a winner!

1 Reply

When I first met my father, I was 97 and he was 13.

1 Reply

@jespah,

I expect this opening line would belong to a sci-fi or fantasy novel in the The Time Traveler's Wife or Benjamin Button ilk?

0 Replies

@Eva,

Eva's self-decadence made her declare a momentary moratorium on Bulwer-Lytton Contest thread posts.

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

Leaving the organ donation center with her rejected, drug-addled boyfriend in tow, Lorena's razor sharp tongue pierced the air like an inexperienced surgeon, cutting deeply but not in the right place.

0 Replies

@Mame,

Like a clap of thunder, nay, like the report of a fowling piece, Senator Smith's dreams of reelection
were abruptly ended by an explicitly juicy CNN breaking news item that greeted him as he awoke to a
beautiful spring morning.

1 Reply

@neko nomad,

As the broken, bleary, addled, adipose yolk of the sad, cynical sun oozed bileously through the curdled clot of clouds, drawling their customary curses at the eternal ennui of the dismal, dingy, diurnal dawn display, Roger grunted and threshed his way towards that which he was accustomed to call consciousness, entoiled and embroiled in his sticky, foetid bed linen, his eyes encrusted with the exudations of what, in this fallen orb, passes for sleep, his tongue furred with the noxious tasting fungal down of fallen man and his hair-entrapped ears filled with the hell of this sub-lunary, Sisyphal, Stygian, stinking planet...the alarm clock.

1 Reply

@dlowan,

That's sooo Henry Jamesian, dlowan. Resubmit, svp.

0 Replies

"I'm not really thinking of England, thought Lady Bogsworth, as the swarthy young gardener's hands wrapped around her heaving torso like a sweaty English Ivy."

0 Replies

Standing in the deeply darkened kitchen at 2AM, lit only by the refrigerator's open door and the glow of the sputtering street light just outside the window to his left and the hallway Miami Beach Palm Tree night light, Howard Mitchell, clad only in his glasses and a pair of black socks, remembered he finished the last of the red wine and wondered out loud if he had done the right thing by quitting smoking twenty-five years before.

Joe("Emma!" he shouted.)Nation

0 Replies

The A2K Bulwer-Lytton Contest

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