What makes you want to read when you start a new novel?
Readers have been asking themselves that question since the first novels were written in the 18th century.
It takes experience for readers to pick up on the value of a book when reading only a paragraph or two.
But some novels start out so badly that even a novice should be able to weigh in with accurate criticism. These are ten winners of this year’s Bulwer Lytton contest (run by the English Dept. of San Jose State University), wherein one writes only the first line of a BAD novel:
10) “As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber he would never hear the end of it.”
9) “Just beyond the Narrows the river widens.”
8) “With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description.”
7) “Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: ‘Andre creep… Andre creep… Andre creep.”
6) “Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back-alley sex change surgeon to become the woman he loved.”
5) “Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eking out a living at a local pet store.”
4) “Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do.”
3) Like an overripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.”
2) “Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear,’ a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death—in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies.”
And the winner is…
1) “The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside the darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog’s deception, screaming madly, ‘You lied!’”
P.S. If you can come up with a starting sentence of your own that rivals the worst novel openings in literature, send them to us and we’ll have our own contest.
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Here are some quips and quotes from readers who like sayings containing a bit of truth, a little humor and occasional satire:
We spend the first half of our lives trying to understand the older generation, and the second half trying to understand the younger generation.
If you want to be a failure, just try to please everybody.
There is never time to do it right, but there is always enough time to do it over.
The best substitute for brains is silence.
If winning isn’t important, who do they keep score?
If you drop the ball, don’t gripe about the way it bounces.
Luck is a mighty unreliable thing to depend on.
Tact is when you make guests feel at home even though you wish they were.
A school bus driver has all his troubles behind him.
Too many parents tie up their dog and let their children run loose.
Another sign of American progress is small cars and big lawn mowers.
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Top of the morning!