It was a dark and stormy night...

[ckissick]

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

The ultimate bad-writing contest. Let's see your entries.

Here are three of mine.

Gerald, while struggling to don his pantaloons, couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made a poor choice in becoming a circus clown, especially as Bongo the chimp had a thing for big, red, bulbous, round noses.

The corpse lay on the floor, motionless.

Horatio Hornblower had nothing on the kid from the Great Chesapeake, as he hauled in the day’s catch of flounder whose fishy eyes said, “Now, here’s a great fisherman”, if fish eyes could talk, which they can’t, but Horatio Hornblower could certainly lay claim to having a cooler name than the kid, whose name was Mike.

[pete3799]

You win.

[widebody911]

Cut straight to the good stuff: Bad Sex Award 2007 shortlisted passages | Books | guardian.co.uk

[Zeke]

It was a stark and dormy night. She lay motionless on the floor as her fish eyes eyed my hornblower. "Now here's a great catch," said she, or so I thought until I realized it was Mike the chimp and I ran for the cooler.

[crustychief]

G^% D(^*&^%^&*! I need a towel.

[jyl]

Related topic, the "shortest story", popularly attributed to Hemingway but that may be wrong:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

[DARISC]

Trebon had never been in such a situation, a situation so foreign to him that he might as well have been back in that neon-less Morrocan bazaar, the name of which had escaped him for years, as had the name of the fellow traveler he'd encountered in that mysterious lair of exotic commerce, a lean, saturnine fellow of moribund disposition with an aquiline nose not unlike that of an eagle, unsmiling and ungracious, who smirked darkly when Trebon offhandedly, but with exquisite courtesy and formality, brought to his attention that his shoe was untied.

[DARISC]

Being a licensed euphemist with years of exprience in the field, Plinth, a slightly built middle aged gentleman of good breeding and education, was all the more shaken to his very roots upon finding himself speechless when served a bowl of soup accompanied with an inverted spoon by the surly waiter, who rudely distracted his attention as he sat in quiet repose, pondering the small wrens flitting about the splashing courtyard fountain and racking his brain trying to remember what it was that he'd forgotten while waiting for his soup.

[DARISC]

"I hate this neon-less bazaar!" muttered Fernwad while standing, picking his aquiline nose, which was not unlike that of an eagle, amidst the steaming throng, a throng which, to his further annoyance, included a slightly built gentleman of good breeding and education who introduced himself as Plinth, who had overheard him and, with reserved good cheer, remarked that, yes the bazaar was devoid of neon, however he percieved it to be pleasantly dim, which utterance was only topped in its ability to irk Fernwad by the ensuing comment by Trebon, Plinth's somewhat gay appearing travelling companion, that his shoe was untied.

[DARISC]

Fez O'Fez, forlornly forgetting fervidly fantasized fumblings, feeble fumblings, fetid, forgettable indeed, foundered about his small stall near the end of a hall in the pleasantly dim bazaar where he plied his ancient craft, slipped back into his self destructive habit of observing the throng and leeringly noting the homosexuals in its midst, three of which caught his forlornly roaming eye, one of which was pointing at one of the other's shoes and apparently irritating that one very much.

[DARISC]

Ducky Sansabelt, who's petite blondeness and languid sexuality never failed to attract men like flies, some of them open, endured her curse with a certain cocquetishness, a cocquetishness that didn't fail to attract two passers by who stopped to introduce themselves as Plinth and Trebon, two sadly hapless passers, for, as it turned out that Ducky Sansabelt was the cousin of one Fernwad, who, upon seeing Plinth and Trebon approach her, was propelled into a fit of rage that these two ingrates were confronting his cousin/lover, a matter which became much more complicated that afternoon and developed into a full blown mele in that dimly lit neon-less bazaar when the swarthy Fez O'Fez, Ducky's secret lover, bolted jealously from his stall and jumping into the fray, caused Fernwad to step on his untied shoelace and fall on the flagstone, fracturing his elbow.

[DARISC]

Ackley sat pensively, engrossed. it would seem to the passers by, in the mortar, but it wasn't the mortar but rather the flagstone upon which he had his attention riveted, thinking to himself "every flagstone has a story", which thought, to this so far unpublished writer, seemed ominously portentious, as indeed it turned out to be when Ackley, suddenly hearing a mele and fray behind him, turned on his camel stool just in time to see a man with an aquiline nose, not unlike that of an eagle, fall and fracture his elbow on a flagstone while three other men engaged in a mele and fray which quickly escalated into a fracas, watched not only by him but also by a woman of petite blondeness and languid sexuality sitting beningnly on her petite behind, and his fingers twitchingly flittered the pen in his hand like a wren flittering at a splashing fountain and, watching this romantic scene unfold declared to himself with a sly grin "I'm going to write a worst-seller!"

[ckissick]

The winning sentence from 1988 has Porsche content:

Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven--fueled by a single accelerant--and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf Romeo.

--Rachel E. Sheeley, Williamsburg, Indiana


BTW, Darisc, you do to sentences what Gallagher does to watermelons.

[DARISC]

Originally Posted by ckissick

...BTW, Darisc, you do to sentences what Gallagher does to watermelons.

I try.

[jshape]

PLUS



EQUALS

A true Dark & Stormy night.....