The Funniest Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest Entries – Children
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness”
The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest is a tongue-in-cheek contest held annually and is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited “to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels” – that is, deliberately bad
The contest was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University and is named for English novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the much-quoted first line “It was a dark and stormy night”. This is the opening from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford
These are the entries (winners and dishonourable mentions) from the year 2002 to 2017 which I personally find funny or clever in some way.
She couldn’t decide whether it was the tail-less rat devouring another neighboring rat’s brain in his glassed cage, or just the way the doctor and his white-haired assistant were applying the saw to Aslan’s skull casing as he lay dismembered on the great table, but something told Lucy they’d tumbled through another portal and out of Narnia.
Little Billy Wonka spent his days running through the Gumdrop Forest, dashing through the greenery of Marzipan Valley, hopping along the banks of Honey River and racing to and fro between the Chocolate Factory to his Gingerbread Abode . . . which is not surprising considering his colossal daily sugar intake.
The doctors all agreed the inside of Charlie’s intestinal tract looked like some dark, dank subway system in a decaying inner city, blackened polyps hanging from every corner like tiny ticking terrorist time bombs, waiting to burst forth in cancerous activity; however, to Timmy the Tapeworm this was home.
Shortly after that interfering do-gooder Snow White had introduced Sneezy to non-drowsy antihistamines, he had to change his name to Brian, where he then left the mines with Ray (formerly Sleepy) who was now a caffeine addict and Bob (formerly Grumpy) who was on 100 milligrams of Prozac a day, and Doc whom Snow pointed out had never actually graduated from medical school and was being sued for malpractice–oh how he despised that high and mighty ho.
The handsome man bent down to kiss the pale lips of the catatonic maid just as the first small bubble appeared in the corner of her mouth, followed, in slow motion, by a stream of popping translucent spheres, and Prince Jarris, heir to the throne of the Kingdom of the Seven-and-a-Half Mountains straightened up, climbed upon his horse and rode away to search for another sleeping beauty.
The wood nymph fairies blissfully pranced in the morning light past the glistening dewdrops on the meadow thistles by the Old Mill, ignorant of the daily slaughter that occurred just behind its lichen-encrusted walls, twin 20-ton mill stones savagely ripping apart the husks of wheat seed, gleefully smearing the starchy entrails across their dour granite faces in unspeakable botanical horror and carnage – but that’s not our story; ours is about fairies!
I’m convinced that the Doc is dealing drugs to most of the mining crew because they either can’t stay awake, constantly sneeze, grin like maniacs, or won’t look you straight in the eye (not to mention behaving like a moron) and they wonder why a dwarf gets grumpy!
The woods were all a-twitter with rumors that the Seven Dwarves were planning a live reunion after their attempted solo careers had dismally sputtered into Z-list oblivion and it was all just a matter of meeting a ten-page list of outlandish demands (including 700-threadcount Egyptian cotton bedsheets, lots of white lilies and a separate trailer for the magic talking mirror) to get the Princess Formerly Known As Snow White on board.
Thank you for reading The Funniest Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest Entries – Children
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