Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

by Associated Press, on Tue Jul 26, 2011 11:30am PDT

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A sentence in which tiny birds and the English language are both slaughtered took top honors Monday in an annual bad writing contest.

Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wis., won the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for her sentence comparing forgotten memories to dead sparrows, said San Jose State University Prof. Scott Rice. The contestant asks writers to submit the worst possible opening sentences to imaginary novels.

Fondrie wrote: "Cheryl's mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories."

The University of Wisconsin professor's 26-word sentence is the shortest grand prize winner in the contest's 29-year history, Rice said.

Contest judges liked that Fondrie's entry reminded them of the 1960s hit song "The Windmills of Your Mind," which Rice described as an image that "made no more sense then than it does now."

The contest is named after British author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" begins with the oft-quoted opening line "It was a dark and stormy night."

The contest solicits entries in a variety of categories. John Doble of New York won in the historical fiction category:

"Napoleon's ship tossed and turned as the emperor, listening while his generals squabbled as they always did, splashed the tepid waters in his bathtub."

To take the prize for best purple prose, Mike Pedersen of North Berwick, Maine, relied on a thesaurus'-worth of synonyms:

"As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue."

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Online:

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: http:// bulwer-lytton.com/

Omphalos wrote:That last sentence certainly sounds like something he'd write.

The contestant asks writers to submit the worst possible opening sentences to imaginary novels.

A Thing of Eternity wrote: I wonder if we could get in shit for submitting KJA's stuff, because man would that ever be amazing if we sent in some of his work and it won!

A Thing of Eternity wrote: I wonder if we could get in shit for submitting KJA's stuff, because man would that ever be amazing if we sent in some of his work and it won!

Freakzilla wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote: I wonder if we could get in shit for submitting KJA's stuff, because man would that ever be amazing if we sent in some of his work and it won!

What's the worst that could happen, plagiarism?

D Pope wrote:That works, sorry about being slow to catch on.

SandRider wrote:

D Pope wrote:That works, sorry about being slow to catch on.

absolutely fine, my communications are often in need of clarification ...

if General Ewell would've asked General Lee just exactly what he meant by "if practicable",
the Army of Northern Virginia would've been on "the High Ground" on the morning of the Second Day
of the engagement at Gettysburg, and burning Washington, D.C. to the ground by September ....

merkin muffley wrote:

SandRider wrote:

D Pope wrote:That works, sorry about being slow to catch on.

absolutely fine, my communications are often in need of clarification ...

if General Ewell would've asked General Lee just exactly what he meant by "if practicable",
the Army of Northern Virginia would've been on "the High Ground" on the morning of the Second Day
of the engagement at Gettysburg, and burning Washington, D.C. to the ground by September ....

It was obviously practicable. Ewell pussied out.