Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Award Winners

[Chicago Jake]

San Jose State University runs a contest every year, challenging writers to come up with the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. The rest of the novel need not be written.

The winning entry was:

Gerald began--but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash--to pee.

Jim Gleeson
Madison, WI

Here are the full list of winners and their tortured prose:

www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2007.htm

[Ardbeg... innit]

DAMN, I hope he took it past the first sentence... that really grabbed my attention, such as it was for a person with adult onset ADD.

My favorites, from the Vile Pun Catagory...

The droppings of the migrating Canada geese just missed the outdoor revelers at the inaugural Asian math puzzle competition, marking the first time that dung flew over Sudoku Fest.

Kevin P. Craver
Lakewood, IL

He was often found lurking behind the bakery, begging for scraps and practicing his rap, which is why he was known locally, as the synonym bum.

Ed Harrison
Lyman, ME

[Bif St Lou]

Updated for 2008