2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winners

by Reamsie Sun Oct 17, 2010 8:29 am

I believe I've post about this before, but we have new winners so here it is again. This contest has been going on since 1982 at San Jose State University. For those of you who don't know, Edward George Bulwar Lytton is the author of that famous opening sentence "It was a dark and stormy night." Most of us probably remember it from Snoopy always using it in the Peanuts comic strip. Most of us just don't know that that sentence is quite a bit longer.

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."

--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

So every year people submit their most wretched purple prose and a winner is selected. I love seeing what people come up with, quite entertaining. In fact there are probably a couple of writers among us who might give this one a shot. Just for fun.

So this year's winner is:

Molly Ringle wrote: For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

-Molly Ringle Seattle, WA

A link if you want to see the rest and the specific category winners. I'm curious as to what some of our posters favorites will be.