Easy as A, B, C . . . from BB
When I need to put a Friday Friends’ blog together, it’s good to have LOTS of friends! My absolutely BFF, Herb Arnold (well, yeah, and he’s also my husband), sent me an article from the digital magazine Thought Catalog which had been published on Sep. 12, 2013, by Nico Lang. She called it “33 Of The Most Hilariously Terrible First Sentences In Literature History.” She claimed these were some of the worst of the worst from the Bulwer‑Lytton contest.
Based on novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer‑Lytton’s famous “it was a dark and stormy night” opener, the contest asks writers to submit an opening sentence for the “worst of all possible novels”. You may enter any of many genres from Children’s Literature to Spy Novels, and one sentence is awarded the dubious honor of the “worst sentence of the year”. I picked only seven of her thirty‑three to share here. They are some of the best entries from the past decade’s contests.
6. Jordan Kaderli: 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.
10. Tonya Lavel: It was such a beautiful night; the bright moonlight illuminated the sky, the thick clouds floated leisurely by just above the silhouette of tall, majestic trees, and I was viewing it all from the front row seat of the bullet hole in my car trunk.
12. Ron D. Smith: As the sun dropped below the horizon, the safari guide confirmed the approaching cape buffaloes were herbivores, which calmed everyone in the group, except for Herb, of course. (Sorry, picked THAT one for my BFF!)
14. Andrew Bowers: “Hmm ¼” thought Abigail as she gazed languidly from the veranda past the bright white patio to the cerulean sea beyond, where dolphins played and seagulls sang, where splashing surf sounded like the tintinnabulation of a thousand tiny bells, where great gray whales bellowed and the sunlight sparkled off the myriad of sequins on the flyfish’s bow ties, “time to get my meds checked.”
16. David S. Nelson: He swaggered into the room (in which he was now the “smartest guy”) with a certain Wikipedic insouciance, and without skipping a beat made a beeline towards Dorothy, busting right through her knot of admirers, and she threw her arms around him and gave him a passionate though slightly tickly kiss, moaning softly, “Oooohh, Scarecrow!”
19. Beth Fand Incollingo: Like a mechanic who forgets to wipe his hands on a shop rag and then goes home, hugs his wife, and gets a grease stain on her favorite sweater – love touches you, and marks you forever.
20. Shannon Wedge: Leopold looked up at the arrow piercing the skin of the dirigible with a sort of wondrous dismay – the wheezy shriek was just the sort of sound he always imagined a baby moose being beaten with a pair of accordions might make.
See you day-after-tomorrow for Sunday’s Snippets!
The ABC Writers Guild 