This is my entry for the Absolute Write blog chain for July. This month's prompt: the Mini Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The Mini Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest means trying to write the worst possible first line of a book or story in the spirit of Edward "It was a dark and stormy night..." Bulwer-Lytton. "Worst" in this case is subjective, but florid and ridiculous purple prose is probably closest to the spirit of the thing. Here is mine:
It was an unusually well told dark and extremely out of the ordinary stormy, because thunder groaned in the abyss like a mad man, night, and by night the vultures cried yelps of pleas for the melancholy in the air had built up and just wouldn't vaporize.
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I pity the poor vultures trapped in this sentence. Nice job.
ReplyDeleteThanks! It was tougher than I thought coming up with something bad...But then it was just random...hehehe.
ReplyDeleteYelping vultures? Someone please vaporize me. This is a truly awful opening line.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping for that, hehe!
ReplyDeleteI missed the vultures on the first pass. Crikey that is one swarm of a storm-thingy! :D
ReplyDeleteWhat, you mean I shouldn't do this? :)
ReplyDeleteI love the first bit... "It was an unusually well told dark and extremely out of the ordinary storm" Absolutely hilarious.
ReplyDeleteThough honestly, I've never understood why people think "It was a dark and stormy night" is a bad opening. It's totally effective for me, conjuring up a very vivid image.
LOL. unusually well-told. Nice ;) also "cried yelps of pleas" was perfectly convoluted and wordy! hehe
ReplyDeleteInteresting callback to the original at the beginning there, but I think the muddled syntax, which suggests that thunderstorms are caused by vultures, is the real gem.
ReplyDeleteAll those commas. Classic. I laughed at "It was an unusually well told dark and extremely out of the ordinary stormy..."
ReplyDeleteThanks guys! Really glad you liked it :D
ReplyDeleteRun on sentence...to much description. Despite that, I actually liked it.
ReplyDeleteNow THAT'S a Bulwer-Lytton sentence! Horrible, awful, overly florid...well done!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny -- I posted about that contest today. And I have to say, your opener is just as bad as the woman's who won the contest this year. Nice job!
ReplyDelete