Literature / Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a yearly contest to find the best worst opening sentence of a novel, started in 1982 by Professor Scott Rice of the San Jose State University in California after having to do research on Edward Bulwer-Lytton and learning of his famous line, It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.

There have been print collections of entries:

1. It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (1984)
2. Son of "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" (1987)
3. Bride of Dark and Stormy (1988)
4. It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Final Conflict (1992)
5. Dark and Stormy Rules Again (1996)

It inspired Adam Cadre to form the Lyttle Lytton Contest due to finding the Bulwer-Lytton too long.That started in 2001.

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Tropes exhibited by the contest or entries:

• Aliens in Cardiff: An entry recorded in It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, discards the Big City and sets the putative action in a more unlikely venue:
  "It had been three days since Torfongu had eaten Los Angeles, and now he sat staring down at Bakersfield... a tasty little morsel, indeed."
  — Patrick L. Shepard
  — Eagan, Minnesota
• Alliterative List: From 2013's Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions, a list of alliterative items and some more Added Alliterative Appeal:
  The dark and foreboding landscape was littered with crumbling castles, collapsed crypts, and earthworks for forgotten fortresses wherein lurked those most dastardly of degenerates, whose blood curdling cries made the lives of the locals a living hell – the historical reenactment society. — Phil Davies, Cardiff, UK
• Anaphora:
  • The 1987 winner, uses "ya":
    The notes blatted skyward as the sun rose over the Canada geese, feathered rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically peddling unseen bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by Nature’s maxim, “Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,” and at last I knew Pittsburgh. — Sheila B. Richter, Minneapolis, MN
  • The 1988 winner uses "A man" to prefix a list of qualities:
    Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven – fueled by a single accelerant – and she needed a man, a man who wouldn’t shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf Romeo.
• Barbarian Tribe: The 1984 winner mentions a "barbarous tribe":
  The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarous tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong, clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, “Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you’ll feel my steel through your last meal.” — Steven Garman, Pensacola, FL
• Feghoot: Among the categories is "Vile Puns", containing winners and dishonorable mentions consisting of Hurricane of Puns entries and sentences that build up to a pun at the end.
  • The winning Vile Pun entry from 2005:
    Falcon was her name and she was quite the bird of prey, sashaying past her adolescent admirers from one anchor store to another, past the kiosks where earrings longed to lie upon her lobes and sunglasses hoped to nestle on her nose, seemingly the beginning of a beautiful friendship with whomsoever caught the eye of the mall tease, Falcon.
  • A dishonorable mention from 2021:
    Post-game cake, long a clubhouse tradition for the Mudville Nine, was taken off the menu when new manager Sperb Farquhar made it clear that everybody, including the team's sluggers, would be called on to sacrifice bundt.
• Gassy Gastronomy: 2023 entries, the last Dishonorable Mention of the Dark & Stormy category mentions chili, corn and sauerkraut as gassy:
  It was a dark and stormy night and, having only cans of chili, corn, and sauerkraut in my meager larder, I mixed my supper, knowing that if the electricity went out I, at least, would have gas.
  Michael Karasik, Novato, CA
• I Kiss Your Hand: The second-place winner of the 1984 contest is about the feelings of a woman whose hand is being kissed, from Georgia State University professor Joseph Parko, who penned:
  Lady's Olivia's heart fluttered within her breast like a tethered bird in a cage as the mysterious stranger bent to kiss her hand, his smoldering dark eyes reflecting the baleful fire of the Ranchipur ruby that tossed like some ill-fated crystalline craft upon the passion-swept crest of her heaving white bosom.
• Mesodiplosis: 2023 entries, one of the Romance category's Dishonorable Mentions uses a list of "the [Noun] (on/in) his [Noun]" comparative phrases to say how Doug feels about his love interest:
  She was the caviar on his blintz, the cream in his coffee, the hole in his donut, and the cherry on his chocolate sundae, thought Doug Penrose as he looked at Katie through the haze of the Labor Day barbecue smoke, if only she’d stop nagging him about his weight.
  G. Andrew Lundberg, Los Angeles, CA
• Our Mermaids Are Different: From 2013's Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions, this sentence:
  Betty had eyes that said come here, lips that said kiss me, arms and torso that said hold me all night long, but the rest of her body said, “Fillet me, cover me in cornmeal, and fry me in peanut oil”; romance wasn’t easy for a mermaid. — Jordan Kaderli, Dallas, TX
• Shout-Out: To Joanne Rowling and her Harry Potter series, in the 2008 Children’s Literature winner, referencing Dumbledore, Hagrid, Harry Potter, Quidditch, and Quirrel + Voldemort:
  Joanne watched her fellow passengers – a wizened man reading about alchemy; an oversized bearded man-child; a haunted, bespectacled young man with a scar; and a gaggle of private school children who chatted ceaselessly about Latin and flying around the hockey pitch and the two-faced teacher who they thought was a witch – there was a story here, she decided. — Tim Ellis, Haslemere, U.K.
• Snobby Hobbies: From 2022, one of the Dishonorable Mentions of the Odious Outliers category, talks about classy, a.k.a rich, people activities:
  Jimothy walked into the joint like he owned the place, which he did, but not like a typical owner of a place like this; more like a classy, silver spoon owner, except not classy like wearing tuxedos to horse dancing and equine NASCAR event classy, but an eating a gas station hotdog with a knife and fork, napkin on his lap kind of classy.
  — Elliott Cox, Clover, SC
• Tom Swifty: It's a competition for bad prose, so this trope is kinda enforced. From Kimberly Baer, Woodbridge, VA in 2016, we have these.
  "Nurse, I need more blankets, and my water pitcher is empty, and also my bedside lamp isn't working," Tom said coldly, dryly, and darkly, yet at the same time patiently.

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