Congratulations to the winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2007, the competition to find the best worst opening lines for a novel. Jim Gleeson, who is writing a self-help book for slackers called “Self-Improvement Through Total Inactivity”, is this years winner.
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2007.htm
Ironically there are plenty of examples of bad opening lines that are not parodies.
The contest is named after the famous ‘dark and stormy night’ opening of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Some of his work was taken very seriously in the 19th Century including the wonderful “Vril, The Power of the Coming Race” which is available online.
An example from the book…
But the greatest curiosity in the collection was that of three portraits belonging to the pre-historical age, and, according to mythical tradition, taken by the orders of a philosopher, whose origin and attributes were as much mixed up with symbolical fable as those of an Indian Budh or a Greek Prometheus.
From this mysterious personage, at once a sage and a hero, all the principal sections of the Vril-ya race pretend to trace a common origin…
Among the pithy sayings which, according to tradition, the philosopher bequeathed to posterity in rhythmical form and sententious brevity, this is notably recorded: “Humble yourselves, my descendants; the father of your race was a twat (tadpole): exalt yourselves, my descendants, for it was the same Divine Thought which created your father that develops itself in exalting you.”
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