
The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest: 2019 Winners - DrScump
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2019
======
tlb
> After almost twenty years of baldness, Harry finally decided to splurge on
> an expensive, human-hair wig – after all, four hundred dollars to look
> twenty years younger was a small price toupée.

Now, that joke could have been written any time in the last century. But
nobody thought of it until 2019. So never worry that there aren't any good
ideas left.

~~~
gabcoh
I love the sentiment however:

"If satan had hair and ever lost it There would be hell toupee"

Literally just googled toupee jokes and every single one seems to be based on
this pun.

[https://upjoke.com/toupee-jokes](https://upjoke.com/toupee-jokes)

------
VladimirGolovin
Found a nice Lisp snippet:

"All I can say is that I have never been so insulted (even by the likes of my
moronic sister (who seems to delight in making me uncomfortable (and she is so
good at it, knowing just how to push my buttons (which I think is a skill that
all siblings possess to some extent (which I believe proves some sort of
genetic link (despite the fact that I really enjoyed genetics in school
(relating on so many levels to Gregor Mendel and his peas (but of course peas
make me gag, since my throat swells when I eat them)))))))) as I was by
someone suggesting that I have ADD."

~~~
chki
Actually one could argue that the sentence structure resembles ADD symptoms in
a way.

~~~
sparky_z
That's definitely the exact joke they were going for.

~~~
chki
Yes, now that you say it it's pretty obvious.

------
Sniffnoy
Already linked in a reply by shantly, but see also the Lyttle Lytton contest,
which requires entry be short rather than rambling on:
[http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html](http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html)

------
reitzensteinm
Wow, this is awesome. Made an entry for next year for the Dark & Stormy
category, which seems to exist by virtue of the rules discouraging you from
using it:

It was a Dark & Stormy night in Chiang Mai, with monsoon weather rapidly
setting in only those up to no good dared brave the streets, however in
Sacramento where this book is set it was actually a fairly pleasant afternoon.

~~~
ksaj
That looks like a run-on sentence as well. After "streets" should either be a
period, or at least a semi-colon. Maybe its missing a couple of colons in the
second half as well. Well done!

------
TaylorAlexander
A lot of these from years past have made it in to the Linux package “fortune”.
If you pipe fortune in to the program “cowsay” you can have a cow tell you a
short silly comment. On all my computers I do this in the .bashrc so it
happens on every new terminal. Highly recommended.

sudo apt install fortune cowsay

Then edit ~/.bashrc Add the following line to the end of the file:

fortune | cowsay

Enjoy!

~~~
kej
You can do `fortune | cowsay | lolcat` for the same thing in rainbow colors.

------
scarejunba
These are so very entertaining. Haha, some of them are actually clever enough
that they'd be good one-line jokes if you edit out all the stuff-to-make-it-
succeed-in-this-award:

> Dropping his now-empty Remington .30-06 and tearing across the tundra after
> two weeks of hunting in the Alaskan wilderness in the company of none other
> than three-time Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt—the rustic outing being the
> spoils of his winning bid at the Sun Valley Country Day School live-auction
> fundraiser—Bart Michaelman realized with dismay that, in this particular
> instance, he did in fact have to outrun the bear.

~~~
ctdonath
That is a spin on an old joke ending with “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I
just have to outrun you.”

~~~
scarejunba
Yes! That's why it's funny!

------
ph0rque
The only thing that makes them bad is how most of them ramble on and on
(IMHO). They should be limited in character count, perhaps to tweet-size?

~~~
stan_rogers
The whole idea is based on the famous, rambling and horrible "[i]t was a dark
and stormy night..." opening [0]. A character count limit is missing the point
altogether.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night)

~~~
ph0rque
I'm sorry, I didn't express myself clearly. If these sentences were shorter
and pithier, they would qualify for the _best_ starting sentences, since most
of them are quite funny and/or intriguing. To win the first prize of the
_worst_ sentences, they need to be not only rambling (as most are), but also
horrible.

The winners of a similar contest mentioned by shantly are more in the spirit
of being horrible (or at least corny) while being limited in their rambling
length.

------
cobbzilla
I feel obligated to copy my fave, because I just can’t stop laughing—

“Detective Wilhelm Schmidt’s raspy voice poured through the telephone receiver
like a dump truck of gravel unburdening its load—much like the trucks that
worked around the clock at Rohrer’s Quarry off of 1-81, transporting payloads
of lime, sandstone, crushed rock, and gypsum—though with Detective Schmidt’s
heavy German accent, excavation on its own would not suffice, and a second,
albeit entirely different industry would need to be invoked to really paint a
crystal clear picture of his voice.”

------
tunesmith
Does anyone have a term for the practice of transitioning from in-universe to
out-universe? A few of these sentences do that. I've always found it a little
annoying. Another example is when someone asks, "Why did the so-and-so movie
character do this?" and someone else wittily responds, "Because the
screenwriter needed him to!" I've heard them referred to as Watsonian and
Doylist respectively but I'm wondering if there are other names for it.

~~~
thedailymail
Meta-reference? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-
reference](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-reference)

------
MontagFTB
I can only make it so far down this page before my tears from laughing make it
hard to continue.

------
billfruit
Though the contest is some kind of fun, I do find the insinuation that Lytton
was a terrible writer rather unkind. His works do posess a certain gravitas,
and some esp "The Last Days of Pompeii" were much influential.

~~~
DrScump
I think selecting him as the inspiration for painful opening sentences stems
directly from the opening line to _Paul Clifford_ :

"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."

This sentence gained pop-culture resonance in the _Peanuts_ comic strip, where
Snoopy repeatedly would start writing his novels with "It was a dark and
stormy night." and quickly derail from there.

~~~
dwoozle
Huh, I kind of like that sentence and that kind of florid prose.

~~~
silveroriole
Yeah I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be so bad. It doesn’t stand out as
being far worse than lots of other old books. The Scarlet Letter begins like
this and goes on to have sentences so euphemistic and littered with commas
that they need three re-reads to understand, but that’s a classic:

“A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned
hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was
assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered
with oak, and studded with iron spikes.”

~~~
StavrosK
That reads like the author had a surplus of commas he had to move.

------
goto11
I'm a bit disappointing this is not actual opening sentences from books.

~~~
dmurray
I thought there was a "found" category for real opening sentences, but I don't
see it now. The Lyttle Lytton awards, linked elsewhere, do have a "found"
division which you might enjoy.

------
honoredb
Naturally, you can generate awful continuations in the same style via GPT-2.

Model prompt >>> 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.

>>> ======================================== SAMPLE 1
======================================== The fact that the entire way was over
a five-pointed star of the "Stars of David," which both men had tattooed on
their arms, was beside the point. Neither of them would have been deterred if
their pursuers had been armed with nuclear weapons, which would undoubtedly
obliterate the entire museum, as well as any of the many high-rise buildings
surrounding it.

At the heart of the building is an enormous, ornate winged monolith bearing
the words "

======================================== SAMPLE 2
========================================

"Just the way he built this place," Savage snarled, his hands clenched, "he'd
be able to make any building disappear any time he wanted."

A couple of hours later, back at work, Silver and I were finally able to catch
up with fellow explorer/writer/reporter Charles Fenton, who had been in the
Museum galleries earlier in the day and stayed behind to observe our
conversation. "That was quite a day!" he beamed at me.

======================================== SAMPLE 3
========================================

As they approached the main lobby, Savage turned and grinned, showing off his
impressive, biceps-bound physique. There was a reason the gang of thugs had
been lured here, he explained to Silver. There were two other entrances out to
street level. "The most efficient way of crossing this place is by
helicopter." He paused, eyes scanning the distance. "And that would require an
army or navy to pull it off." He raised his gun and laughed. A few yards away,
Savage and

------
mmettler
I love nearly all of these. If they were novels, I would likely read them.

~~~
Applejinx
I would absolutely read the grand prize winner. "he’d accidentally destroyed
the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago."

It would be a very, very hard book to write, and most likely pretty brain-
frying to read, but I'd read the crap out of that book. One of the most
experimental notions I've ever heard.

It could end with 'frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn' and 'tomorrow is
another day'!

~~~
pure-awesome
Has a Douglas Adams quality about it; if it's possible to write a book
containing an infinite improbability drive, a restaurant at the end of the
universe, and a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue, it's probably
possible to write this.

~~~
DrScump

      a Douglas Adams quality
    

To me, it has more of a Nicholson Baker's "The Mezzanine" feel to it.

------
Qwertystop
I prefer the Lyttle Lytton[1], personally. These get kind of long.

[1] [http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html](http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html)

------
vixen99
Tangential but for a splendid Victorian ghost story I recommend Bulwer-
lytton's 'The Haunters and the Haunted' which you can read for free at
[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17953/17953-h/17953-h.htm#VI](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17953/17953-h/17953-h.htm#VI)

------
mcguire
I have to admit, "the weight of a thousand baguettes" is a brilliant image.

------
z-10
Somebody run those opening sentences through gpt-2 1.5b and post results. I
would do it myself but my video card chokes on 775 :(

------
crankylinuxuser
"It was a dark and stormy night..."

\- Casino Royale, ST:TNG

~~~
jandrese
The central premise of that episode being that they were trapped in a
simulation of a trashy novel.

