
The Lyttle Lytton Contest - plibither8
http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html
======
berbec
This is especially bad when compared to a great first sentance:

"The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed." \-
(Steven King, 1982 "The Gunslinger") [1]

1: [https://litreactor.com/columns/the-top-10-best-opening-
lines...](https://litreactor.com/columns/the-top-10-best-opening-lines-of-
novels)

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Maybe there should be a contest to turn great first sentences into Lyton
worthy bad sentences.

The man in Black ambulated with passion across the Desert, and the Gunslinger
said I'm gonna do that too.

~~~
smacktoward
My given appellation, which I hereby grant permission to you and any other
interested parties to use when speaking in reference to me, is Ishmael.

~~~
smrq
It was the best of times--no, wait, the worst--well, maybe both at the same
time.

~~~
asark
Everyone knows rich single dudes wanna get hitched.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
At 13:00 hrs the weather was normal for April.

~~~
igravious
The did things different back then, like how they do things different in
foreign parts.

~~~
scythe
In an office, I was seated, looking around at what I saw only as the heads and
bodies of the people all around me.

------
alejohausner
Perhaps my favourite best first sentence:

Bother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed
documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared
during that young novice’s Lenten fast in the desert.

From "A Canticle for Liebowitz"

~~~
beat
Along the SF lines, my favorite first line ever is:

The sky over the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

From "Neuromancer", by William Gibson.

~~~
jhbadger
And at least two more recent books followed that up with "It was bright blue",
as that's what many modern digital TVs show rather than the grey analog static
Gibson was referring to. I love Gibson's line, but it's the sort of thing that
will need to be explained by a footnote the way Dickens' description of a
ghost in "A Christmas Carol" as glowing "like a bad lobster in a dark cellar"
is today.

~~~
Kalium
I believe Gibson actually _did_ mean that bright blue. If memory serves his TV
at the time didn't do grey analog static, and he generalized somewhat hastily.

~~~
beat
Being from the same vintage as Gibson, I can assure you, tvs in those days
gave us grey static.

------
riffraff
I don't even have to think about it:

"That branch of the Lake of Como, which turns toward the south between two
unbroken chains of mountains, presenting to the eye a succession of bays and
gulfs, formed by their jutting and retiring ridges, suddenly contracts itself
between a headland to the right and an extended sloping bank on the left, and
assumes the flow and appearance of a river."

That's the beginning of "I Promessi Sposi" (The Bethrothed) which is one of
the most important books of italian literature, and IMO has one of the worst
incipits ever written.

And I feel the 1834 english version[0] is actually more readable than the
original.

[0]
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35155/35155-h/35155-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35155/35155-h/35155-h.htm)

~~~
Balgair
For other HNers out there: _I Promessi Sposi_ really is a great book. If you
are looking for something to read this summer, I'd really reccomend it.

~~~
riffraff
Yes it is, it's just the start of it is a wall of long descriptive convoluted
sentences which feels very off putting to modern sensibilities.

------
jonnycomputer
On the other hand, George R.R. Martin's first sentence of A Knight of the
Seven Kingdoms is amazingly pithy; I was admiring it last night:

"The spring rains had softened the ground, so Dunk had no trouble digging the
grave."

------
benj111
_Commander B. G. Robinson is very feminine and graciously endowed: everything
she has two of are perfectly matched, coordinated, and move with a wonderful
grace that is called “woman.”_

Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Outrageous Okona” shooting script
adapted by Harper Cole

Someone obviously has a different idea of TNG than Gene Roddenberry.

Edit: Link
[http://adamcadre.ac/18lyttle.html](http://adamcadre.ac/18lyttle.html)

------
beat
I remember an entry from 2003 that wasn't a winner, but has stuck in my mind
ever since... and maybe you'll see why.

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain plastered the cheap dress enticingly
to my thigh as I bent to peel the still-warm gum from the sidewalk."

------
throwaway66666
From 2014. (
[http://adamcadre.ac/14lyttle.html](http://adamcadre.ac/14lyttle.html) )

"Obama chuckled. “You mean the Chaos Emeralds?”"

------
rcombine
More specifically, Lyttle Lytton is about writing that first sentence within a
particular word count.

~~~
duskwuff
In response to the Bulwer-Lytton contest [1], which -- in the opinion of some
-- has been flooded with excessively wordy entries.

1: [https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/](https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Let me see if I can remember my (unsubmitted) entry for that:

"He was a dork, and Stormy Knight suddenly shot the ring right out of his
fingers, because she was _tired_ of dorks, especially the kind of dork who
automatically assumed that she'd marry him, even though he was a dork and she
was the kind of girl who could shoot the ring out of a man's hand, hitting
nothing but the ring and maybe a few miscellaneous bits of fingertip."

(Playing with the "It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out"
trope...)

------
johnhenry
Using this in conjunction with GPT-2
([https://github.com/openai/gpt-2](https://github.com/openai/gpt-2)) to make
full stories out of these sentences should be fun.

Update: It's at least "interesting" if not fun; here's a story generated from
the 2019 winner using the GPT-2's medium sized model

[https://pastebin.com/raw/hWn7DNEC](https://pastebin.com/raw/hWn7DNEC)

~~~
asark
There are several really good sentences and/or writing prompts hiding in that
gibberish.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Didn't this article have a longer title originally?

Is it me or have titles on HN been changing a lot more frequently than they
used to, in the last few weeks?

------
floathub
Subjective it may be, but the greatest opening line in all of literature is
surely:

"The beet is the most intense of vegetables."

From Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

~~~
pg_bot
I'll counter with

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

From The Crow Road by Iain Banks

~~~
phillc73
Which Hemingway would you like?

You know how it is there early in the morning in Havana with the bums still
asleep against the walls of the buildings; before even the ice wagons come by
with ice for the bars? \- To Have and Have Not

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had
gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. \- The Old Man and the Sea

Then there was the bad weather. \- A Moveable Feast

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked
across the river and the plains to the mountains. \- A Farewell to Arms

Robert Cohn was once the middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. \- Fiesta:
The Sun Also Rises

Each one of those opening sentences asks more questions.

Is that really what it was like in Havana? Why hasn't he caught fish for so
long? Where was the weather bad? Which river, plains and mountains? Why did
his boxing career stop at Princeton?

I do enjoy Hemingway, but especially I find his opening lines compelling.

------
igravious
You'll maybe want to start with this year:
[http://adamcadre.ac/19lyttle.html](http://adamcadre.ac/19lyttle.html)

This one got me, “The shadowy figure stood alone in the rain on the street
corner under the dim yellow streetlight, casting a long thin shadow down the
alley perpendicular to him.”

Perpendicular?

------
zimpenfish
"Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own."

From the master of bad sentences himself, Dan Brown.

~~~
davidmr
That man has an absolutely unmatched gift for it. It’s genuinely impressive.

[https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-
make-f...](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-
renowned-dan-brown/)

------
Lerc
I recently listened to this
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0128pyh](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0128pyh)

I found it quite enlightening to see some of the thought that goes into an
opening sentence.

------
throwaway3627
Given the advances in AI/ML, there oughta be a Harlequin romance novel
generator.

------
angel_j
Any sentence with parenthesis in it.

~~~
shinkarom
(define contest "The Lyttle Lisper Contest") (print contest)

~~~
angel_j
Parenthesis are fine for code, but in prose you they are usually some inane
interruption of thought that could be deleted, or turned into a sentence.

