LibriVox

[hugh]

This year's 10 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, a.k.a. "Dark and Stormy Night Contest" (run by the English Dept. of San José State University), wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel:

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned,
unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for
competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied
description."

7) "André, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept
along the East wall: 'André creep... André creep... André creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back-alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from
eeking out a living at a local pet store."

4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins
often do."

3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the
corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS...

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her,
disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You
lied!'"
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hughmcguire.net |bookoven.com

[pberinstein]

I wish I could write like that.
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Paula B
The Writing Show, where writing is always the story
http://www.writingshow.com

[kri]

Oh that's great!
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LV T-shirts

[kayray]

We used to buy the paperbacks of the Best (worst?) of the Bulwer-Lytton contest every Christmas for my dad. He'd read them aloud, with great drama, to the whole family and we'd be howling!
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Kara
http://kayray.org/
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"Mary wished to say something very sensible into her USB MacMice MicFlex, but knew not how." -- Jane Austen (& Kara)

[pberinstein]

Now *there's* a modern book I wish we could record. Wouldn't that be fun?
_________________
Paula B
The Writing Show, where writing is always the story
http://www.writingshow.com