

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - igravious
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/index.html

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tzs
I was going to enter this several years ago (late '80s), but never got around
to sending in my entries. I have no shame, so here is what I was going to send
(warning: tasteless and offensive material ahead):

• "My encounter with the Genie didn't turn out half bad," thought Lance as he
sat down at the tiny piano to rehearse for his new job with the circus.

• David Ben MacGoldstein was considered cheap even by the other Scottish Jews.

• Dave's theory that placing a metal plate in the microwave oven would shunt
away the dangerous radiation, thus making it safe to dry the cat, proved to be
wrong, although the experiment was not a total loss, for Dave was at least
able to prove that Fluffy did NOT have nine lives.

• As he had done every evening for the past ten years, Bert poured himself a
shot of whisky, and sat down to reflect on that strange twist of fate that led
him, once the most respected student at Harvard Medical School, to become a
veterinary proctologist.

• In the race for the "Best Serial Killer, 1991" award, Jeffrey Dahmer was
eating up the competition.

• "Up, up, and away!" cried Bean Boy, America's newest Superhero, leaping
toward the sky, as his unique method of propulsion ensured that the
uncounscious criminals would remain that way until the police arrived.

~~~
peter_l_downs

        • In the race for the "Best Serial Killer, 1991" award, Jeffrey Dahmer was eating up the competition.
    

This is gold.

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dang
It is time to ask what has tormented me for years. What's so bad about "It was
a dark and stormy night"? It seems decent enough. "Dark night" is redundant, I
guess, but then some nights _are_ darker than others. So I don't get it—why
the worst-ever reputation?

~~~
quotient
There's nothing bad about the phrase "it was a dark and stormy night" per se.
However, that's not the full opening line. What follows is the most abysmally
convoluted sentence imaginable:

"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."^[0]

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Clifford](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Clifford)

~~~
jcr
And the opening paragraph gets worse from there, something about lighting his
pipe with a "promethean torch." Whether it's a change in tastes over the
years, or a continuing annoyance is subject to debate, but the general style
is called "Purple Prose".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose)

~~~
jonnathanson
Tastes have changed, largely because media have changed. Back in the day,
there were no movies, video games, TV, or radio. Novels were the only form of
personal, portable, escapist entertainment (aside from opium, I suppose). As
such, they were very "visual." Readers enjoyed long bouts of description. It
helped to set the scene.

Sample some mass-market Victorian fiction, and you'll find a lot of openers
like that one. The style is anachronistic today, though it survives in some
genres, and it has its famous practitioners. (George R.R. Martin is about as
purple as they come.)

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jkdearden
There's also the Lyttle Lytton contest[0], which is a similar contest that
limits entries to 200 words, plus has some additional contests. I'm a fan of
the Found contest, which is a competition to find the most unintentionally
bad/silly thing that's actually been published.

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

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leephillips
"E-mail entries should be in the body of the message, not in an attachment
(and it would be really swell if you submitted your entries in Arial 12
font)."

I don't understand. Maybe because I've only used Mutt for 20 years. Is it a
joke?

~~~
Strang
I think it's a polite way of requesting that emails not use garish fonts and
colors. Just imagine how many submissions he must get in illegible
"handwriting" fonts.

~~~
ctdonath
Parent uses "Mutt", an email program using a UI so old it's probably endorsed
by the Society For Creative Anachronism; the notion of "fonts" or "colors" in
email, however garish, is incomprehensible to him. For that email client,
content is ASCII text, nothing more.

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bradleysmith
I like the general tone of the page.

"Finally, in keeping with the gravitas, high seriousness, and general
bignitude of the contest, the grand prize winner will receive … a pittance."

~~~
brianmcc
We mustn't misunderstimate the bignitude. Ever.

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ryanthejuggler
I originally discovered this through the "fortune" program that's still
available in many Linux package managers.

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davelnewton
I've been following this for years-even before I discovered my biological
family is Lytton, the one and the same. Yay me!

