It Was a Dark and Stormy Night ...

By Margaret Lucke

Some of my favorite opening lines don't begin any book. They're standalones; often they are complete single-sentence stories. I'm talking about the winning entries in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

The English Department of San Jose State University has sponsored this annual wordfest since 1982. Writers are challenged to come up with the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. With starting lines like these, the rest of the novel becomes superfluous.

The contest is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a minor (perhaps deservedly so) but prolific British novelist of the Victorian era. His best known title is probably The Last Days of Pompeii, but he is most famous for penning the immortal opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night … " Thus begins the novel Paul Clifford, the story of an English gentleman man who moonlights as a criminal.

 The complete sentence reads:

"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."

Snoopy, famed beagle from the Peanuts comic strip, appropriated the first seven words for the title and first sentence of his own novel. Snoopy is not one to waste words. His entire novel is only 214 words, not all that much longer than Bulwer-Lytton's single sentence. A born mystery writer, he jumps straight into a suspenseful plot with his second sentence: "Suddenly a shot rang out." 

Back to the Bulwer-Lytton contest: In its first year it attracted three submissions. In its second year, thanks to a little publicity, the number grew to 10,000. Writers are invited to submit as many abysmal first sentences as they like. One year a hopeful author sent in more than 3,000. If he had strung them together he would have had an entire book, which surely would have qualified as a the worst of all possible novels.

Entries are accepted any time, though the official deadline is April 15 -- which, as the contest's organizer, Professor Scott Rice, notes, is "a date that Americans associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories."

I submitted my own masterpiece of a first line one year. Sadly it didn't win, possibly because it exceeds the recommended length of not more than 50 of 60 words. I'm fond of it anyway, and I can't resist including here:

"Until the night he set her house afire, burning down the only home she'd ever known, incinerating the manuscript of her nearly completed novel, turning her cherished photos of Daddy to ash, though thank goodness the cats escaped … until the hour when sparks soared across the heavens like shooting stars and the smoke from the conflagration carried away all her hopes and dreams … until the moment when a firefighter squelched her screams and drenched her nightgown with a well-aimed hose … until that very instant Isabelle believed her love affair with Rolf would last forever."

Hmm, maybe I should think about writing the rest of that book.

Comments

[Camille Minichino]

I didn't think you were capable of writing a "bad" sentence, Peggy! Now I'm not so sure . . . love this!

[Mysti]

spitting up my breakfast burrito at "well-aimed hose," that's a keeper!

[Liz]

May I ask, respectfully, if your sentence did not win, what did?

[Ann]

What a great sentence, Peggy! :-D Definitely worth continuing to see what story might evolve.
And thanks for mentioning Bulwer-Lytton and providing a smile to me today....

[Staci]

Great sentence, Peggy! So much drama! You should definitely write the book that goes with such a fantastic opener.

[Margaret Lucke]

Thanks, everyone! Glad to provide a smile.

Liz, the winner in the year I submitted my entry was an elaborate simile involving cheese.

[Susan C Shea]

Peggy, such a great first sentence - loved it!