Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

San Jose State University. Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. (https://www.bulwer-lytton.com). San Jose, CA. 2022. Online.

First Sentences:

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 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.

 

John Farmer of Aurora, Colorado - 2023 Bulwer-Lytton Contest Grand Prize Winner.

 

Description:

 

Not everyone agrees with me that you can judge a great book by its first sentence. But we all can recognize when a book's first sentence is really, really awful. Of course, the epitome of bad first sentences was the famous one written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1909 novel, 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

Suffice to say, Paul Clifford will not make it to The First Sentence Reader blog of recommended readings. However, one can take gleeful delight in off-beat first sentences like this. And to help with your secret desire to see bad first sentences, there is a contest to determine the worst first sentence of the year, The Bulser-Lytton Fiction Contest. Professor Scott Rice of San Jose State University decided in 1992 to create this international competition where anyone, including all First Sentence Reader followers, can submit a tremendously bad sentence for consideration.

You can read the other 2022 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners and submissions here as well as entries from past contests under sections like "Adventure," "Crime and Detective," "Fantasy and Horror," "Historical Fiction," "Romance," "Vial Puns," and many more. Great time-killer.  

Here are a few other "Winners" and "Dishonorable Mentions" (as the contest terms the runners-up) from the 2022 contest for your pleasure:

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.

Eric Rice, Madison,WI

 

While scrolling through the online catalog of the Acme website trying to decide if he should order rocket roller skates, TNT, and an anvil, or—Fool-Me-Twice fake tunnel paint, the Coyote suddenly realized, ‘Hey, I could just order food.’

Rusty Hamilton, Candby, OR

 

Tony Angel walked Fiona back to the car and handed her the leash; if only he hadn’t thrown the ball so hard; it had marred an otherwise perfect first date on the White Cliffs of Dover.

Lizzie Nelson, Wheaton, IL

 

Ensign Kurt Pulver inadvertently scuttled his command career path by interrupting the starship dedication ceremony with “You mean, ‘to go boldly,’” and spent the next sixteen years de-polarizing the Jefferies Tubes four times a week.

Randall Card, Bellingham, WA

Just thought we all needed to take a break from great reads and wallow a bit in the gloriously awful sentences of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Enjoy.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Zinsser, William. On Writing Well  

Probably the most clear guide to writing available. Answers any grammer and style questions succinctly with easily-understood examples of good and poor writing.

 

Introduction to The First Sentence Reader blog

Samples of great first sentences and even a quiz to match first sentences to their books. (Tooting my own horn a bit.)

 

The Good Times

Baker, Russell. The Good Times. New York: Penguin 1990. Print

First Sentences:

My mother, dead now to this world but still roaming free in my mind, wakes me some mornings before daybreak.

"If there's one think I can't stand, it's a quitter."

I have heard her say that all my life. Now, lying in bed, coming awake in the dark, I feel the fury of her energy fighting the good-for-nothing idler within me who wants to go back to sleep instead of tackling the brave new day. 


Description:

I cannot imagine a better book that portrays the newspaper world -- from writing to newsroom to drinking to bosses -- than Russell Baker's The Good Times. Covering his years as a delivery boy for the Baltimore News-Post to police reporter and later newsman for the Baltimore Sun to Chief of the Sun's London Bureau, Baker cheerfully recalls his youthful impressions, preconceived notions, hero-worship, and reality behind his various roles in creating a newspaper piece.

In his youth, Baker's family often presented him with the exemplary image of his Cousin Edwin who once had been managing editor for The New York Times. This unseen figure, to the young Baker, was a man to be admired for his wit, accomplishments, and writing skills for a highly-respected media outlet. Baker felt a strong compulsion to follow in his footsteps.

As a result, he spent seven years at the Baltimore Sun, where he started as a novice police reporter and learned to "rewrite, write features, edit copy, do makeup, crop pictures, write captions, and compose headlines that fit." Later, he moved up to become the Sun's  London correspondent. 

I arrived in Fleet Street with the police reporter's weakness for overwrought language and passion for cliches, and indulged both for the first few months. Some of my early stories read like parodies written for a burlesque on journalism.

Eventually he does land a job at Cousin Edwin's newspaper, serving as The Times'  White House correspondent. This is thankless job with boring days of re-writing press releases, sitting in on ambiguous briefings, drinking, and endless waiting for something big to happen. Then President Eisenhower has a heart attack in 1955. It would be an opportunity for Baker to show The Times what a great reporter he was and thereby land a more exciting job.

It slowly dawned on me that this was not just a big, big story, but the biggest story in the world, and likely to remain so for several days to come. The biggest story in the world, and it was all mine.

But this White House job soon becomes less of a challenge for him.

[at age 36] I have built nothing worth leaving and don't even know how. Instead, I spend my life sitting on marble floors, waiting for somebody to come out and lie to me...From that moment on, I was emotionally ready to end my reporting days.

After haggling with editors, publishers, and owners, he was finally offered a column on The Times Editorial page, "one of the gaudiest prizes in American journalism." It is here that Baker achieves his biggest spotlight and freedom to write about what he wants, and fame follows.

I admit to knowing nothing about the newspaper publishing business beyond my junior high school writing for our student paper, the Eleanor Joy Toll Tollagram. But The Good Times cleverly walks Baker (and us readers) through the various stages of becoming a reporter, from chasing sirens to writing of foreign events in London, political writing, eventually a personal column.

Baker is a clever, humorous, and highly entertaining writer who is capable of both self-deprecating and biting commentary about others. The Good Times is a quality read for anyone interested in newspapers, reporting, and great writing. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about all of this.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Gill, Brendan. Here at the New Yorker.   

It just doesn't get any better than to read a captivating writer (Brendan Gill) plying his craft describing a fascinating place (the New Yorker offices) and recounting the escapades of cleverly funny people (James Thurber, E.B. White, Peter Arno, and editor William Shawn). Hugely funny.

A Paper Son

Buchholz, Jason. A Paper Son. New York: Tyrus 2016. Print

First Sentences:

It was the day before the storm hit, the storm we'd been watching on newscast Doppler as it approached from Alaska, devouring the coast like a carnivorous planet made of teeth and ice and smoke.

The weatherpersons pointed to it, their expressions mixes of glee and trepidation, their predictions heavy with superlatives, italics, underlining. 

Description:

There is one word that comes to my mind to describe Jason Buchholz's debut novel A Paper Son and that word is "intriguing." It's a plot that cannot be predicted, full of scenes and people that are completely, unexpectedly interesting, mysterious, and slightly quirky. It is the kind of book that one cannot stop reading, becoming completely immersed in the lives and situations portrayed. And then, once we stop reading for whatever reason, the characters and story stay with you like a haunting melody or a puzzle that needs to be examined over and over in order to understand it and wonder how to solve it.

In A Paper Son, Perry Long is an third-grade teacher in San Francisco, happily giving his charges interesting assignments during the day and writing unpublished stories at night. But one day he sees in his cup of tea a vision of a small Chinese family looking off into the distance. Although the vision quickly dissipates, the people in the image capture his interest and he writes a story that night about them and their possible lives on a boat he imagines is taking the family to China.

The story appears in an obscure magazine and leads to a knock on his door from Eva, a elderly Chinese woman. Eva demands to know why Perry has robbed her family's history by telling its story. She then questions him about the fate of one of the figures in Perry's fictional story, settles in to Perry's apartment and vows not to move out until that boy is found and her family's complete story unfolded. It is up to Perry to keep writing their stories to somehow reveal an ending that solves the mystery of Eva's family.

Huh? See what I mean about intriguing?

Perry begins to experience other inexplicable situations and people. While swimming, looking into a puddle, gazing at a distorted figure in a mirror, or listening to Eva comment on the accuracy of each new chapter, he witnesses unusual daily occurrences in his life which no one else notices. For example, he repeatedly hears a mournful Chinese tune and sees a group of quadruplets playing mahjong. 

When the second chapter in "Eva's family story" appears in the same magazine (although no one had submitted it), Perry, completely confused now, sets out to explore what really is happening in his life and the "real" lives of what he knows to be fictional characters of his own creation. 

What is real and what is Perry's own imagination somehow come to life? Is it possible he is writing a story as it really happened to characters that somehow, somewhere, sometime actually were real? Each day presents new visions that challenge his grasp on reality, fiction, and his role in it all.

Absolutely fascinating, extremely well-written, and absorbing plot and characters make this a highly recommended book for anyone willing to jump down a rabbit hole into the "intriguing" world of fiction at its finest. Memorable in every aspect of the world of great writing.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

See, Lisa. China Dolls.   

Three young Chinese women meet at the 1938 San Francisco World's Fair and become friends, if albeit different personalities. The novel follows their lives and relationships in the United States, good and wrenching, as they find their place and personality in the new country. Lovely writing with interesting descriptions of cities and people of that era. (previously reviewed here)

Bleaker House

Stevens, Nell. Bleaker House. New York: Doubleday, 2017. Print

First Sentences:

This is a landscape an art-therapy patient might paint to represent depression: grey sky and a sweep of featureless peat rising out of the sea.

The water is the same colour as the clouds; it is flecked by white-capped waves, spikes of black rock, and, intermittently, the silvery spines of dolphins 

Description:

In Nell Stevens' Bleaker House, she recounts her early efforts to write a novel on a remote, wind-swept island in the Falklands. She had earned a fellowship to spend time anywhere of her choosing to write a novel and, yes, she chose Bleaker Island, "eight square miles of rock and mud," to assure she would have no distractions. Being the only person on the bitter cold, tree-less, penguin-ridden island she certainly achieved that desire.

The ground is flat and beige and unchanging, a rolling scene of mud and grass and gorse. There is nothing I can see that distinguishes one mile from the next....It feels as though we are at sea, surrounded by water with no sight of land, and might sink at any moment without a trace....This is the bottom of the world.

But could she actually come up with an idea and then write a novel in all that quiet? Time would tell.

Bleaker House describes her daily routines, efforts at writing, and struggles with understanding her choices and goals, both current and in her past. Stevens is a clever writer who allows readers access to her stream-of-consciousness thoughts on writing and life on Bleaker Island as she faces writing challenges, boredom, and self-realization. Stevens envisions writing a crime novel since no crimes have ever been committed on Bleaker Island. We readers are permitted to follow her research efforts, plot outlines, and character development. But will it work itself into a novel? That is the question Stevens struggles with during her walks through the roadless, countryside among the sea lions and penguins.

She figures she must write 2,500 words a day to complete and revise a novel during her forty-one days on the island. Schedules and food rationing become a daily priority, but she begins to doubt her plot and even writing skills as the days go on.

A very personal, absorbing memoir about a distant environment and one woman who tries to create something new. Her struggles and triumphs, along with her daily routines to keep her sanity, put readers directly into the Bleaker Island world, something most people will never experience first-hand. For that feeling along with the musing of the deeply introspective author Stevens make Bleaker House a solid, engrossing read.

Surrounded by people, it is very easy to feel alone. Surrounded by penguins, less so.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Beston, Henry. Outermost House.   

Classic memoir of the author's year of solitude on an isolated beach in Cape Cod as he tries to capture the natural beauty of that environment, its animals and plants.

Amy Falls Down

Willett, Jincy. Amy Falls Down. New York: St., Martin's 2013. Print.

First Sentences:

Because the Norfolk pine was heavy, and also because she was wearing house slippers, having not yet dressed for the day, Amy took her time getting to the raised garden.

Her house slippers were fuzzy, oversized, and floppy, and if she moved too fast, she would walk right out of them.

Description:

OK, not the greatest of first sentences, but they set the scene immediately for the incident that affects the rest of the book: a loss-of-balance fall by the novel's main character, Amy Gallup, in Jincy Willett's Amy Falls Down. Amy, a 60ish deeply private single woman and former writer of a few minor works, strikes her head on the fall and briefly passes out.

The next thing she is aware of is standing on her front porch waving goodbye to the reporter who had scheduled an interview with her for that afternoon. What Amy said or did during that session was completely unknown to her.

Amy's unexpectedly frank statements are published in a magazine, shared and discussed on the Internet, causing Amy to find herself a celebrity. She is high demand to be interviewed by loutish radio hosts interested in catching some of the popularity of this unknown writer. They often end up the brunt of her sharp wit and devil-may-care opinions.

What are the next steps for Amy as she re-enters the world outside her own household routines? Agents? Travel? Interviews? Book signings of her out-of-print writings? More writing? Students? Celebrity? Someone even creates a new website and blog for her, aptly titles "Go Away." These possibilities terrify her as a private person who is not really sure what all the fuss is about.

But others around her love the possibilities and want to help her emerge into the world. Long-lost friends, a rough-talking agent, book publishers, and conference organizers all enter her life with plans for her as well as their own personal agendas. It is up to Amy to address them and her new life in any way she can. And she does deal with them: baiting some on-air with spontaneous lies, toying readers with outrageous ideas, and steadfastly frustrating everyone as she guards her privacy and independence.

Then, there are obscure hints throughout the narrative regarding her earlier years of her life: a mysterious mentor; her husband of convenience; a workshop with a deadly sniper attack; and her decision to quit writing. There is also her notebook where she still records ideas and thoughts for what ... another book possibly?

"I've never played with words in my life," she said..."Do soldiers play with bullets? Do carpenters play with wood? Wordplay is for writers with nothing to say. When I have nothing to say, I don't write."

As I write this synopsis, admittedly it doesn't sound like much of a story or character to capture your interest. But believe me, it is a surprisingly quick-witted, funny, and introspective novel about the dealing with the challenges of writing, celebrity, privacy, and fame. What emerges is a very determined character who gathers strength in her old and new convictions, arriving at unexpected destinations she previously would never have desired or shared with others until after her accident where she fell and hit her head.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Willett, Jincy. The Writing Class  

Focuses on the earlier life of Amy Gallup after her brief success as a writer. Now a widow, Amy loves teaching her writing class with unusual students, one of whom might be a murderer.