Rare is the day that neither Country Girl or I have much to say. Actually we have plenty to say but CG has, as you've read, had a bit of a rough time of it lately and I'm running on vapors...and not in a good way.So let me share with you something a dear and clever friend shared with me several years ago, and that tickles me to no end: The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton penned the famous line more famously lifted by Snoopy, "It was a dark and stormy night;" but goes on "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."
Pretty bad, eh? That's the point of the competition - to find the best worst opening line of a work of fiction. Even if that line is, actually, the entire work.
Example, "Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was Polartec 200 (thanks to gene splicing, a diet of force-fed petrochemical supplements, and regular dips in an advanced surface fusion polymer), which had the fortunate side effect of rendering it inedible, unlike that other Mary's organic lamb which misbehaved at school and wound up in a lovely Moroccan stew with dried apricots and couscous."
And here are the rest. Enjoy.
Image credit to sikhspectrum.com
Comments