Worst Opening Sentences of 2022(bulwer-lytton.com)
bulwer-lytton.com
Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
153 comments
I tend to write with an excessive amount of parenthesis with context/tangents. I used to joke it was due to Lisp/Scheme being one of my first languages. Took me a few years to realize the ADD connection.
I do this to get it out, then I rewrite it to take all the parentheticals out.
Those parentheticals can be rewritten with commas, which sent me on an exploratory tangent trying to see if one could use commas instead of parens in Lisp.
But several layers of parentheticals delimited by commas are ambiguous to parse in the general case.
That's interesting. What did you find?
Like a sibling commenter said, commas are not enough to be unambiguous. Ambiguity is fine in prose, because we can resolve it from context, but computers need something clear and well structured.
you also have dashes for parenthesis.
Me too - I try to avoid parentheticals in polished writing because they're usually there to avoid having to decide if something is really important. If it's not important, take it out (or if it's a very technical detail that can be skipped on first reading, maybe put it in a footnote (uhoh, I'm doing it)).
Linus overuses parentheses. Or rather, parenthetical remarks. It's interesting.
It still needs Yoda speak to qualify as lisp.
So the venn diagram of ADD(ADHD is the preferred term these day) folks and Lisp(Scheme if you're fancy) programmers is a circle?
Is use of deeply nested parentheticals really a sign of ADD? Certainly, nesting the parentheticals deep enough to overflow your mental context stack will lead to losing the plot. However, if both you and your intended listener have the capacity to keep all of the contexts in memory, it wouldn't seem to cause problems.
Hehe honestly this is what often happens when I do journaling with my stream of consciousness text editor: https://enso.sonnet.io
Hard to keep track of the parentheses though as the text disappears after 3-4 lines.
I was also experimenting briefly with a graph-based text editor where o could keep my tangents in check but still have some overall structure.
Hard to keep track of the parentheses though as the text disappears after 3-4 lines.
I was also experimenting briefly with a graph-based text editor where o could keep my tangents in check but still have some overall structure.
I bet they speak with a lisp.
That sentence seems enough like some bastardized version of shakespeare[0] and Lisp that I bet you could get it to compile in some dialects.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_Programming_Langua...
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_Programming_Langua...
Looks like the author has been writing Scheme code on the weekends..
All the parentheses close at the same point, though.
Lest anyone get triggered by the subject matter into actually trying to find this, it's from https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2019. (We changed the URL (more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018429).)
Thank you!
They seem bad to me, until this one:
> If I wanted to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a dystopian YA’s protagonist, I needed several things: missing or deceased parents (check), a complicated romantic life involving multiple partners and predictable behavior (check), a tough exterior that protected my sensitive inner workings (check), and finally, a life of danger, uncertainty, and constant struggle to survive (check); it turns out, turtles are well-equipped to star in YA adventures!
This is brilliant!
> If I wanted to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a dystopian YA’s protagonist, I needed several things: missing or deceased parents (check), a complicated romantic life involving multiple partners and predictable behavior (check), a tough exterior that protected my sensitive inner workings (check), and finally, a life of danger, uncertainty, and constant struggle to survive (check); it turns out, turtles are well-equipped to star in YA adventures!
This is brilliant!
> tough exterior that protected my sensitive inner workings
So good
So good
They're supposed to be bad. Terrible, in fact.
GP is aware of that. They are pointing one out that they believe does not belong on the list.
Yes by bad I meant bad (but good in the goal of aiming to be bad) until I saw the good one (bad at being bad) but so damn good I can forgive it for that.
The link currently points to the 2019 winners, the correct one is:
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
Fixed now. Thanks! Our software uses canonical URLs when it finds them and in this case the canonical URL was https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2019. I imagine someone making the new page by copy-pasting the old one for... perhaps about 3 years now.
lol
Honestly i think the 2019 grand winner is the best still
>2019 Grand Prize
>Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago.
Honestly i think the 2019 grand winner is the best still
>2019 Grand Prize
>Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago.
I somehow missed he's called Brad Brad. More crap to add to the steaming pile this sentence is. Absolutely masterful.
The half assed alliteration adds an aspect of joy to the already audacious anecdote
Totally disagree!
The structure is clunky, but the payoff at the end is actually really good! Also the dumbness of the name is funny enough to work in the right context. With a little bit of editing this would make a great piece of flash sci-fi on something like nanoism.
https://twitter.com/nanoism
The structure is clunky, but the payoff at the end is actually really good! Also the dumbness of the name is funny enough to work in the right context. With a little bit of editing this would make a great piece of flash sci-fi on something like nanoism.
https://twitter.com/nanoism
That is a work of art.
Reads like opening to Stanislaw Lem's short.
Does that qualify as a (very) short story?
How can the smoke slowly dissipate?
Honestly, I'd read the first one. Trashy detective fiction that's kinda self aware sounds great.
ChatGPT gave me this very credible following sentence:
"That's it," she wailed, "I'm doomed to a life of misery and despair without my dear Harold and a decent sandwich to keep me going."
"That's it," she wailed, "I'm doomed to a life of misery and despair without my dear Harold and a decent sandwich to keep me going."
This would be a great bad opening sentence as well with some minor modifications.
One of my favourite episodes of CBC's Wiretap is a self-aware trashy detective fiction, much in the same vein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgR1WapaDLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgR1WapaDLI
I don’t know if this extends to full-on parody, but Fergus Craig’s Roger LeCarre bits are quite enjoyable.
It's so bad that I actually like it
[deleted]
> “Hoist the mainsail ye accursed swine” shouted the Captain over the roar of the waves as the ship was tossed like a cork dropped from a wine bottle into a jacuzzi when the faucet is wide open and the jets are running full blast and one has just settled into the water with a glass of red wine to ease the aches and pains after a day of hard labor raking leaves from the front yard.
> Sir Reginald Brimwater, Guardian of the Tome of Remembrance, Herald of the Immortal Word, Voice of the Histories Both Recent and Ancient, Archivist of the Eternal Ledger, and Memory of the Empire had forgotten his quill, but he was pretty sure he got the gist of what what’s-his-face was saying.
(From the actual 2022 page: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022.)
Pretty good. :) These remind me of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams in style. I wish I knew more hilarious writers. Vonnegut is great though maybe not quite as hilarious. I've tried to read The Innocents Abroad and Confederacy of Dunces but I found myself only trudging slowly through both. I'd love your suggestions!
> Sir Reginald Brimwater, Guardian of the Tome of Remembrance, Herald of the Immortal Word, Voice of the Histories Both Recent and Ancient, Archivist of the Eternal Ledger, and Memory of the Empire had forgotten his quill, but he was pretty sure he got the gist of what what’s-his-face was saying.
(From the actual 2022 page: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022.)
Pretty good. :) These remind me of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams in style. I wish I knew more hilarious writers. Vonnegut is great though maybe not quite as hilarious. I've tried to read The Innocents Abroad and Confederacy of Dunces but I found myself only trudging slowly through both. I'd love your suggestions!
Check out Tom Robbins if you haven't already! Here's the opening to Jitterbug Perfume:
> THE BEET IS THE MOST INTENSE of vegetables.
> The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
> Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.
> The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...
> The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.
> The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.
> In Europe there is grown widely a large beet they call the mangel-wurzel. Perhaps it is mangel-wurzel that we see in Rasputin. Certainly there is mangel-wurzel in the music of Wagner, although it is another composer whose name begins, B-e-e-t——.
> Of course, there are white beets, beets that ooze sugar water instead of blood, but it is the red beet with which we are concerned; the variety that blushes and swells like a hemorrhoid, a hemorrhoid for which there is no cure. (Actually, there is one remedy: commission a potter to make you a ceramic asshole—and when you aren't sitting on it, you can use it as a bowl for borscht.)
> An old Ukrainian proverb warns, "A tale that begins with a beet will end with the devil."
> That is a risk we have to take.
> THE BEET IS THE MOST INTENSE of vegetables.
> The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
> Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.
> The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...
> The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.
> The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.
> In Europe there is grown widely a large beet they call the mangel-wurzel. Perhaps it is mangel-wurzel that we see in Rasputin. Certainly there is mangel-wurzel in the music of Wagner, although it is another composer whose name begins, B-e-e-t——.
> Of course, there are white beets, beets that ooze sugar water instead of blood, but it is the red beet with which we are concerned; the variety that blushes and swells like a hemorrhoid, a hemorrhoid for which there is no cure. (Actually, there is one remedy: commission a potter to make you a ceramic asshole—and when you aren't sitting on it, you can use it as a bowl for borscht.)
> An old Ukrainian proverb warns, "A tale that begins with a beet will end with the devil."
> That is a risk we have to take.
Jitterbug Perfurme, like most of Tom Robbins' novels, is just filled with gold nuggets on every page.
Reading him is like eating mushrooms and strolling through the garden of eden.
Reading him is like eating mushrooms and strolling through the garden of eden.
I recommend Stanisław Lem's Cyberiad. The English translation has amazing prose and it is hilarious. I can't recommend anything else :) I like Charles Stross, good sci-fi with a satirical strike, but he's not as good with words as the authors you mention.
Just picked it up. I'm surprised it reads so well as a translation! I'd have thought it pretty hard to translate wordplay well.
> Confederacy of Dunces
It's definitely a step up in terms of reader effort, but I found it worth it. It doesn't compare well to Pratchett and Adams who are more like a writer's variant of the stand-up comedian (a lot of the entries in this contest feel stylistically close to their writing). A Confederacy of Dunces instead shines in its portrayal of the comically pitiful characters within it, with John Kennedy Toole succeeding in making the cringe-worthy protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly one of the most loathsome characters I have ever come across in a novel.
It's definitely a step up in terms of reader effort, but I found it worth it. It doesn't compare well to Pratchett and Adams who are more like a writer's variant of the stand-up comedian (a lot of the entries in this contest feel stylistically close to their writing). A Confederacy of Dunces instead shines in its portrayal of the comically pitiful characters within it, with John Kennedy Toole succeeding in making the cringe-worthy protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly one of the most loathsome characters I have ever come across in a novel.
Toile was unable to get it published in his lifetime, he died a broken man. His mother kept sending it to publishers until one took pity on her and actually read it. I believe it is the only debut novel awarded a Pulitzer posthumously
If you like Adams there's a good chance you'll appreciate some of Robert Sheckley - I recommend Mindswap in particular.
FWIW, my own favourite humorous sci-fi short is R.A. Lafferty's Been a Long Long Time which can be read online: https://www.gwern.net/docs/fiction/humor/1970-lafferty.pdf
FWIW, my own favourite humorous sci-fi short is R.A. Lafferty's Been a Long Long Time which can be read online: https://www.gwern.net/docs/fiction/humor/1970-lafferty.pdf
Lafferty’s short stories are an underappreciated treasure. I’ve been collecting the reprints as they become available.
I recommend Roald Dahl's "Going Solo". The Audiobook narrated by Andrew Sachs is quite compelling.
Also, maybe "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" by G.K. Chesterton.
And of course most by P.G. Wodehouse.
Also, maybe "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" by G.K. Chesterton.
And of course most by P.G. Wodehouse.
Nothing beats any of the Jeeves books
Robert Rankin author of The Brentford Trilogy is very much in the style of Pratchett and Adams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brentford_Trilogy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brentford_Trilogy
For anyone who likes steampunk, I strongly recommend the Witches of Chiswick!
Right? "Worst" nothing, I felt Sir Terry's ghost while reading that.
Perhaps my standards are just too low, but some of these are actually quite brilliant. I laughed at this one:
> Realising that his symptoms indicated a virtually undetectable, fast acting neurotoxin, CIA coroner Quinn Abner frantically wrote up the details, lay on the floor and, as a professional courtesy, did his best to draw a chalk outline of himself.
> Realising that his symptoms indicated a virtually undetectable, fast acting neurotoxin, CIA coroner Quinn Abner frantically wrote up the details, lay on the floor and, as a professional courtesy, did his best to draw a chalk outline of himself.
It’s almost a Dan Brown parody. But from a single sentence it’s hard to judge how it is intended.
Dishonorable Mention (2019):
> As they sprinted together down the echoing, looping ramp of the deserted Guggenheim Museum, closely pursued by three swarthy members of the resolutely vicious Cannelloni gang, square-jawed British Royal Marine art historian/world's deadliest sniper John Savage and his voluptuous young modern art critic/Navajo linguist Samantha Silver cursed architect/interior designer/writer/educator Frank Lloyd Wright for designing such a circuitous route out of the building.
is both horrifying and a thing of wonder .. context is everything.
It wouldn't be out of place in one of my all time favourite books [1].
[1] http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/kleinz.html
> As they sprinted together down the echoing, looping ramp of the deserted Guggenheim Museum, closely pursued by three swarthy members of the resolutely vicious Cannelloni gang, square-jawed British Royal Marine art historian/world's deadliest sniper John Savage and his voluptuous young modern art critic/Navajo linguist Samantha Silver cursed architect/interior designer/writer/educator Frank Lloyd Wright for designing such a circuitous route out of the building.
is both horrifying and a thing of wonder .. context is everything.
It wouldn't be out of place in one of my all time favourite books [1].
[1] http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/kleinz.html
That is a) SUPERB, and b) a perfect example of the Dan Brown Code[1].
[1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.h...
[1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.h...
For more on Dan Brown, see this hilarious parody:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/dont-make-fun-of-r...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/dont-make-fun-of-r...
You owe me a new keyboard and a fresh coffee.
Thanks for sharing this link! I read it eagerly on my laptop, with the text of the article presenting itself as a perfect companion to the soothing glow of the screen of my sleek (yet familiar, like an old friend you only just met) portable computing device.
Ah, I'd forgotten that one of the world's best-selling novelists wrote like GPT-3 :D
(Seriously, every time GPT-3 produces prose that passes the skim read test, you need this guy to go through it and point out that this is the third time it's mentioned the protagonists' profession in the paragraph and silhouettes don't stare)
(Seriously, every time GPT-3 produces prose that passes the skim read test, you need this guy to go through it and point out that this is the third time it's mentioned the protagonists' profession in the paragraph and silhouettes don't stare)
[deleted]
I hadn't read any Dan Brown, gee that's really bad! So, the sentence maybe should've been rearranged so the book starts with Square-jawed, getting right into the action.
For someone who writes so badly (and he does), I have always found Dan Brown to be compulsively readable. Sometimes we just need trash, I guess.
It's quite fun to read. Maybe trash fiction but fun
Reminds me of last 30 minutes of the film Cremaster 3, in which a man scales the inside of the Guggenheim, rock-climbing style, stopping on each floor to confront some sort a challenge from a group (line dancers, hardcore punk bands, a famous sculptor) as an abstract retelling of a Masonic origin myth.
I've not read any Hoban, but he sounds hilarious, if a taste acquired. Catch-22 levels of absurdity.
A very broad and versatile writer, Kleinzeit is nth level absurdist, Riddley Walker is a superb post apocalytic novel, The Mouse and His Child is a simple yet deep childrens book about windup toys on the hunt for secret of becoming self winding, and that's just a few off the top of my head.
For more, see:
http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/index.html
http://www.russellhoban.org/
For more, see:
http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/index.html
http://www.russellhoban.org/
[deleted]
The current title of this submission ("Worst Opening Sentences of 2022") is not quite correct: the about page [1] states that "the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels".
The opening sentence of (what would be) the worst novel is different to the worst opening sentence of a novel.
The Children's & Young Adult Literature Winner for 2022 [2] is actually a good opening sentence:
> Three bears arrived at their den to discover a yellow haired girl sleeping, and as she was neither too hot nor too cold, neither too soft nor too hard, but just right, they ate her.
[1]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/about
[2]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
The opening sentence of (what would be) the worst novel is different to the worst opening sentence of a novel.
The Children's & Young Adult Literature Winner for 2022 [2] is actually a good opening sentence:
> Three bears arrived at their den to discover a yellow haired girl sleeping, and as she was neither too hot nor too cold, neither too soft nor too hard, but just right, they ate her.
[1]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/about
[2]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
My all-time favourite is the dishonourable mention for 2004 Children's Literature:
As he entered the room within which so many a wild night of their sweltering love affair had been spent, the White Rabbit regarded her with benevolent eyes, her posture such that he suspected something was wrong, but before he could speak Alice unburied her face from her trembling hands and between her intense sobs he made out the words, "I'm late . . . I'm late."
Perfect. Simply perfect.
As he entered the room within which so many a wild night of their sweltering love affair had been spent, the White Rabbit regarded her with benevolent eyes, her posture such that he suspected something was wrong, but before he could speak Alice unburied her face from her trembling hands and between her intense sobs he made out the words, "I'm late . . . I'm late."
Perfect. Simply perfect.
Aerosmith's "You can't catch me 'cause the rabbit done died" seems apropos here
I mean, it doesn't leave much room for the rest of the novel, but maybe that's the point.
It's very post-modern. You start with the ending, and then the rest of the book is how everything that happened led to her untimely demise.
it’s barely post-modern. it’s a boring and overused tv plot technique that makes me groan whenever I come across it. build up excitement, tension, drama, create an interesting scene, then throw it all away with a “how did we get here” and a roll back in time
Post-modernism is 50 years old, and refers to the modernity of the first half of that century. Of course it feels cliché and outdated in 2022.
Yep. That's me. I bet you're wondering how I got myself into this situation...
Yes. And I was so happy when Squid Game didn't do that.
three weeks earlier... i don't like when stories start that way
Makes for a good cold open where you want to inform the reader of some detail that the book's characters aren't privy to.
Maybe the novel's about the bears?
Sadly the girl was not just any wanderer in the woods, she was the daughter of the psychotic and vengeful huntsman, thus began a game pitting bears and man in a contest for supremacy that would change the enchanted forest - forever.
The bears being pursued by humans because they ate the girl, and therefore having to leave their nice home and live life on the run.
Starring Liam Neeson as the hunter...
Goldilocks
They ate his little girl... Now he's pissed.
Coming to a theater near you.
Plot twist: Was a frame job by the Big Bad Wolf.
Goldilocks
They ate his little girl... Now he's pissed.
Coming to a theater near you.
Plot twist: Was a frame job by the Big Bad Wolf.
Don't forget to check the Lyttle Lytton, which is funnier (as it's shorter) and also makes you wonder how he got that domain name.
http://adamcadre.ac/22lyttle.html
http://adamcadre.ac/22lyttle.html
Seconding this, I like that contest much better than the original.
To anyone reading them and wondering why the funniest entries aren't necessarily the winners: Lyttle Lytton tends to prefer sentences that read like a bad first sentence of a serious novel, not a good first sentence of a comedic or otherwise intentionally-absurd novel. The latter sort often make the list to some degree, but rarely end up at or near the top.
To anyone reading them and wondering why the funniest entries aren't necessarily the winners: Lyttle Lytton tends to prefer sentences that read like a bad first sentence of a serious novel, not a good first sentence of a comedic or otherwise intentionally-absurd novel. The latter sort often make the list to some degree, but rarely end up at or near the top.
Lyttle Lyton is definitely the better contest. It's easy to make writing bad when it's long and confusing. Perfectly crafting a brief opening sentence is so much harder.
My all-time favorite was from 2018:
> The wizard’s beard was long, much like Gandalf’s in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, who was also a wizard.
It's perfect.
My all-time favorite was from 2018:
> The wizard’s beard was long, much like Gandalf’s in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, who was also a wizard.
It's perfect.
[deleted]
Yes, I think this format is much better. Brevity, wit, etc. Too many of the originals just pack as much absurdity as they can into a run-on sentence.
I must be missing the joke, but what about the domain name is odd? Name+relatively obscure TLD doesn't seem too weird.
Before TLD expansion I think it was kind of rare to get an x.y domain as an individual, they were all taken or squatted.
This one in particular has some rare ones - someone has http://www.ac.
This one in particular has some rare ones - someone has http://www.ac.
I think I have a taste for absurdist humor, because a lot of these read like openings to fantastically funny satire. At least to me.
With the exception of the Sci-Fi category -- those all read like high school pornographic fan fic. Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed in the sci-fi category. Seems like low hanging fruit. Surely they could have done better!
With the exception of the Sci-Fi category -- those all read like high school pornographic fan fic. Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed in the sci-fi category. Seems like low hanging fruit. Surely they could have done better!
hey, I liked the pornographic fan fic low hanging fruit pun. +1!
Well, one of my front-runners this year was:
"I consider it necessary today to speak again about the tragic events in Donbass and the key aspects of ensuring the security of Russia."
(https://theprint.in/world/full-text-of-vladimir-putins-speec...)
"I consider it necessary today to speak again about the tragic events in Donbass and the key aspects of ensuring the security of Russia."
(https://theprint.in/world/full-text-of-vladimir-putins-speec...)
See also Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award [NSFW]:
https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award
https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award
I think the Usain Bolt one is pretty funny.
The worse opening sentences of what? Books? Are they named anywhere?
Edit: the books don't exist: 'Since 1982 the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest has challenged participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written. Our whimsical literary competition honors Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with "It was a dark and stormy night."'
Edit: the books don't exist: 'Since 1982 the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest has challenged participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written. Our whimsical literary competition honors Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with "It was a dark and stormy night."'
> These stories, my children, are about Prince Charming and his three girlfriends: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.
Netflix made a movie that is literally this exact plot.
Netflix made a movie that is literally this exact plot.
Non-native english speaker here Why are these openings bad?
They are purposefully bad, as it's a contest where people send submissions. Most of these are "bad" because they try to pack too much into a single sentence, and the concepts are so over the top the reader would be having a hard time keeping up. Some of these are bad because of genre mismatch, for example, having gory details in a children's book.
As enkid said, they're written specifically for the contest. I think you're supposed to assume that the "bad" novel that goes with them is mostly intended to be serious, or at least that it isn't made up of non-stop slapstick humor. Most of them are parodying genre cliches, and especially the fantasy ones seem to break the fourth wall and complain about made-up words and spelling. Many of the first lines would work if the entire novel is a parody, and if the rest of the writing doesn't run out of steam and become boring.
Awesome starting prompts for chatgpt.
These winners are always too long-winded. “Brevity is the soul of wit”.
The alternative is the much funnier Lyttle Lytton Contest: http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html
The alternative is the much funnier Lyttle Lytton Contest: http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.
It was quite disappointing to learn that these are purpose written for the contest with the explicit goal of being terrible.
I wished for more context on more of these sentences (like what is the book about, and how old was the author writing this in earnest)
https://lithub.com/this-years-very-worst-opening-sentence-is...
I wished for more context on more of these sentences (like what is the book about, and how old was the author writing this in earnest)
https://lithub.com/this-years-very-worst-opening-sentence-is...
I came across this contest earlier this year when I read Money[0], a 1840 play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Still fun to read and the basic stories of romantic comedies didn't change that much since the ancient greeks.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_(play) I have a 1891 edition by Friedberg & Mode, Berlin, with only the German footnotes in fracture while the rest in a readable serif font.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_(play) I have a 1891 edition by Friedberg & Mode, Berlin, with only the German footnotes in fracture while the rest in a readable serif font.
> I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn't help—I was fresh out of salami.
Grand Prize winner? I would read that book in a heartbeat!
Grand Prize winner? I would read that book in a heartbeat!
Prompt: write me a bad opening sentence to enter in the bulwer-lytton contest
Response: > "As the sun set on the dusty plains, John pulled his sweat-drenched shirt away from his stick-thin frame and gazed longingly at the flickering neon sign of the only bar for miles, silently praying for a cold beer to quench his thirst and dull the pain of his troubled past."
Response: > "As the sun set on the dusty plains, John pulled his sweat-drenched shirt away from his stick-thin frame and gazed longingly at the flickering neon sign of the only bar for miles, silently praying for a cold beer to quench his thirst and dull the pain of his troubled past."
What a fail, that is way too good
I'm a big fan of Peter F. Hamilton but hadn't read any of his Greg Mandel books, the first of which, and his first published novel, I finished the other week.
Well...there's a quite a few nuggets of prose in Mindstar Rising that wouldn't be out of place in this list. Thankfully his writing improved quite a bit, and/or he employed better editors.
Well...there's a quite a few nuggets of prose in Mindstar Rising that wouldn't be out of place in this list. Thankfully his writing improved quite a bit, and/or he employed better editors.
This is annoying. I really hoped this would be the worst opening sentences in actual books published in 2022.
Incredisappointing.
Incredisappointing.
The heat blanketed the small village in much the same way a body bag blankets a murder victim, except that a body bag is usually black, which the heat wasn’t, as heat is colorless, and the village wasn’t dead, which a murder victim usually is.
I would never read a book with any such incipit – How the heck somebody can even think publishing one!
They are fictional. But fear not, somebody will auto generate novels from those prompts with chatgpt sometime next week.
I have complicated feelings about the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest. On the one hand, from a lighthearted perspective, it's quite funny and I enjoy reading the absurdist entries. On the other hand, I can't help but sense an undercurrent of wannabe-elitism from people who doth protest too much about "It was a dark and stormy night", in the same way that beginner programmers will fixate on minutiae like indentation or naming conventions in an attempt to gain social status among their peers. Like, sure, it's not the most gripping opening sentence in history. But the fact remains that if you took a good author and forced them to use it, they could still write a good book. (That might be an interesting contest in its own right.) Be careful not to get overfixated on the meme.
Bulwer-Lytton was, in his time, a best-selling author, and one wonders how well he'd be remembered now if not for the opening words of Snoopy's ever-beginning novel in the Peanuts comic strip, which (if I am not mistaken, and it likely is I am, but I don't care because this my comment) served as one of perhaps many inspirations for the opening line contest, which is of course as far as Snoopy ever got, being a better Sopwith Camel fighter pilot, vulture imitator and serial doghouse-layer uponer than he was a novelist.
But it's "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."
I was skeptical until I read the about us page and learned these sentences are crafted to be the worst.
The skill of John Hardi (three awards: one winner and two dishonorable) are not to be denied.
The link is actually to the 2019 winners. The 2022 winners are at the obvious extrapolation:
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
Fixed now. Thanks!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018429
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018429
Looks like the link is wrong and points to 2019 rather than 2022
Fixed now. Thanks!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018429
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018429
2019
And obvious trait of all those is too much postmodernism. Instead of trying to lay out a story about human beings, books start name-dropping or being smart from the line 1. Trying to claim too much context that they don't own but obviously going to exploit.
These aren't actual books. It's a competition open to all to submit what would be the worst opening lines in an imaginary bad novel:
"Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels."
"Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels."
This comment is itself a beautiful example of postmodernism. Well, at least my incredibly naive idea of what postmodernism is. I do it that way, intentionally.
Ironically turning a non postmodernist comment into a postmodernist comment through context. Golf clap
This is a contest where contestants intentionally set out to write the worst opening sentence possible.
And what makes it even funnier is that they all sound like they could be from a real Dan Brown novel.
Or Charles Stross, or Peter Watts. A lot of modern prose starts with illusions of grandeur and name-dropping.
I challenge you to find a sentence or paragraph from either author like these. Please cite the relevant book.
Received editorial wisdom these days is that you have at most 100 words to capture the reader's attention (and by "capture" I mean "drag it into the back of your serial killer van, sedate it, hog-tie it, then re-enact that classic scene from A Clockwork Orange -- only in prose") or they'll put the book down and never look at it again.
FYI, a typical page in a paperback novel contains 300-400 words: the preceding paragraph/sentence is 61 words long (per wc(1)).
So starting with a bang is mandatory, if you want to get paid to write for a living.
Welcome to the short attention span society!
FYI, a typical page in a paperback novel contains 300-400 words: the preceding paragraph/sentence is 61 words long (per wc(1)).
So starting with a bang is mandatory, if you want to get paid to write for a living.
Welcome to the short attention span society!
"So starting with a bang is mandatory"
Maybe that explains two of my favourite opening lines that both include things blowing up:
"It was the day my grandmother exploded"
and
"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."
Maybe that explains two of my favourite opening lines that both include things blowing up:
"It was the day my grandmother exploded"
and
"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."
> Received editorial wisdom these days is that you have at most 100 words to capture the reader's attention
What's weird about this is how I find Jane Austen's intros catch my attention, although they often have only tangential relation to the actual characters or plot of the book. The first chapter of Persuasion is about a vain, foolish, impoverished baronet whose primary comfort when he's down is to see his own name written in the massive tome of nobility. The main character is barely mentioned until the end of the chapter. But for some reason, I've always found it strangely engaging. Why do I care about this guy? But for some reason, I do -- at least, I'm hooked long enough to get to the actually interesting characters.
What's weird about this is how I find Jane Austen's intros catch my attention, although they often have only tangential relation to the actual characters or plot of the book. The first chapter of Persuasion is about a vain, foolish, impoverished baronet whose primary comfort when he's down is to see his own name written in the massive tome of nobility. The main character is barely mentioned until the end of the chapter. But for some reason, I've always found it strangely engaging. Why do I care about this guy? But for some reason, I do -- at least, I'm hooked long enough to get to the actually interesting characters.
> Lenie Clarke lies on her bunk, listening. Overhead, past pipes and wires and eggshell plating, three kilometers of black ocean try to crush her. She feels the Rift underneath, tearing open the seabed with strength enough to move a continent. She lies there in that fragile refuge and she hears Beebe's armor shifting by microns, hears its seams creak not quite below the threshold of human hearing. God is a sadist on the Juan de Fuca Rift, and His name is Physics.
Starts kinda OK but pretentiousness creeps in towards the end.
Compare that to the best SF book I know to date, Pandem:
> On the twenty-ninth of February, on the strangest of the days marked on the calendar, David Hammer, an employee of a respected city newspaper, was returning home a little later than usual.
> It was a humid, almost spring evening. At Charing Cross Station, David boarded a train that was due to drop him off in East Croydon in half an hour. There was no one in the compartment for eight at that hour, except David and a guy of about eighteen, who, having fallen on the seat, immediately closed his eyes and gave himself to the power of music flowing from the flat box of the player into the black clips of headphones.
Unfortunately I don't think it was ever translated to English :)
Starts kinda OK but pretentiousness creeps in towards the end.
Compare that to the best SF book I know to date, Pandem:
> On the twenty-ninth of February, on the strangest of the days marked on the calendar, David Hammer, an employee of a respected city newspaper, was returning home a little later than usual.
> It was a humid, almost spring evening. At Charing Cross Station, David boarded a train that was due to drop him off in East Croydon in half an hour. There was no one in the compartment for eight at that hour, except David and a guy of about eighteen, who, having fallen on the seat, immediately closed his eyes and gave himself to the power of music flowing from the flat box of the player into the black clips of headphones.
Unfortunately I don't think it was ever translated to English :)
Is Dan Brown a postmodernist author these days?
Wasn't there a similar yearly anthology of bad lines/paragraphs from actual novels/stories? I am pretty sure such a thing existed but couldn't find it anywhere.
You may be thinking of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Here's the 2019 winner:
"Katsuro moaned as a bulge formed beneath the material of his kimono, a bulge that Miyuki seized, kneaded, massaged, squashed and crushed. With the fondling, Katsuro’s penis and testicles became one single mound that rolled around beneath the grip of her hand. Miyuki felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws.”
https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award
"Katsuro moaned as a bulge formed beneath the material of his kimono, a bulge that Miyuki seized, kneaded, massaged, squashed and crushed. With the fondling, Katsuro’s penis and testicles became one single mound that rolled around beneath the grip of her hand. Miyuki felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws.”
https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award
Yes, that was it! Thank you!
Brilliant.