The winner of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest celebrating the best in bad writing was announced yesterday. A Madison, Wisconsin man won for this opening sentence:
"Gerald began - but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them 'permanently' meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash - to pee."
I know now that I've been in too many fiction writing workshops 'cause I actually don't think it's that bad. In fact, given the length of that clause nestled in there, I'm fairly certain it could pass for a line out of Henry James. Not to insult the Wisconsin guy or anything...
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