Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

The Dark and Stormy Night Contest

#1

My liturary walk of shame entailed my submission qualifying as dishonorable mention in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, otherwise known as the Dark and Stormy Night Contest.

bulwer-lytton.com/2015win.html

The object of this contest is to submit the worst possible first line to a fictitious novel.

Here was my entry....

Derwin Thoryndike vowed to place a 14-carat engagement ring on the finger of Glenda-Sue Ellington, so now all he had to do was save up enough money to buy the ring, get it inscribed, and then locate a person named Glenda-Sue Ellington and convince her to marry him.

  (Favorite submissions from other authors to follow)
#2

After weeks at sea, Captain Fetherstonhaugh and his hardy crew had at last crossed the halfway point, and he mused that the closest dry land now lay in the Americas, assuming of course that it was not raining there. — David Laatsch, Baton Rouge, LA

#3

“My name is Vangir," the stout dwarf announced, "son of Valdir, son of Tolfdir, son of Torsson, heir to the dwarf kingdom of Darag-Vur, King of the Under-Folk, ring-giver, dragon-slayer, M.D., DDS. — Austin Stollhaus, Louisville, KY

#4

The night was dark; which is a bit redundant, since night is by definition dark, unless it’s a stormy night when lightning causes moments of brilliant light, or except in places like Norway or Alaska where summer nights can be pretty light, but still, most of the time when you say “night,” people are going to think “dark.” — Joseph E. Fountain, Fredericksburg, VA

#5

This is a story about love, but not just any kind of love like how you love the feeling of trading in a pair of soggy, old socks for fresh ones, or the taste of salty French fries dipped in a chocolate milkshake, I’m talking about the other kind of love. — Anna Sagstetter, Fort Wayne, IN

#6

Turk strained at the controls of the Pulsar-Phased Adenoid Five Galactic Cruiser, trying desperately to pull up from an uncontrolled dive, until he suddenly remembered he was in space, and there is no up or down. — Joseph E. Fountain, Fredericksburg, VA

#7

Spurs a-jangling, Black Bert sauntered to the bar and cried “this town ain’t big enough!”—then gulped a whisky, fingered his six-shooter, and belched—“so I say we annex Dry Gulch, thus increasing our tax base while simultaneously reducing fixed costs through economies of scale.” — Joel Phillips, West Trenton, NJ

#8

“Pecos Mac” McCarthy index-fingered back the brim of his battered Stetson, squatted at the edge of the waterhole, cupped a handful of brackish water, squinted out over the shimmering alkali flats of the Badlands, and decided then and there that he had prit’ near had it with overwrought, hackneyed western imagery. — Joseph Pramuk, Napa, CA

#9

As the giant gorilla swept her up in his hand and started to climb the skyscraper a swarm of fighter biplanes roared overhead and although frightened out of her wits Marjory had a tremendous feeling of deja-vu. — Mal Walker, Mount Barker, South Australia

#10

“I’m nothing without you,” Steele Harrison told Mavis Prescott, which was true on many levels, but primarily because he was her imaginary friend. — Tom Wallace Columbia, SC

#11

Here’s one that I made but did not submit:
Eagerly, Jane went to bed comforted by the thought that tomorrow would bring a new day, and with that day a chance, a glinting, gleaming chance to right the wrongs, the horrid wrongs born of years of ethnic intolerance, an ignorant intolerance that had been passed from generation to generation across the centuries, centuries which had wrought a history which would guide her way in making whole that which had been torn apart, but only if she could shrewdly use her knowledge, a well-rounded and precise knowledge which had been carefully accrued and distilled in the hallowed halls of Academe.

#12

ROFL