It was a dark and stormy night...in Sleepyside!
In 1982, Scott Rice, Professor of English at San Jose State University (Hey! Mary's been there!) created the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest - a challenge to create the first sentence of a hideous story. From the official web site :
Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The contest (hereafter referred to as the BLFC) was the brainchild (or Rosemary's baby) of Professor Scott Rice, whose graduate school excavations unearthed the source of the line "It was a dark and stormy night." Sentenced to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he chose the man with the funny hyphenated name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who was best known for perpetrating The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene Aram, Rienzi, The Caxtons, The Coming Race, and--not least--Paul Clifford, whose famous opener has been plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle Snoopy.
Our challenge - should you choose to accept it - is to give us the opening line of a story about Sleepyside. The idea is that it should be the opening to a story that nobody in their right mind, not even Jonesy, would like to read!
This should be an original sentence - not something that you pull from a fanfic that you don't like, be it your own or someone else's. We can't emphasize this enough - this is not a forum to criticize the writing of others, even jokingly. And it's not going to be a contest, per se - we aren't judging which of these bad line is 'best'. It's just for fun, because, really, reading one of the Dark and Stormy Night books is hysterically funny.
Some examples of lines from the actual, real life contest:
"The notes blatted skyward as the sun rose over the Canada geese, feathered rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim, 'ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh."
That stinker actually 'won' in 1997. Seriously.
Or how about this gem:
Retiring after thirty-five years as a chalkboard salesman, Walter looked on with pride at his collection of basketball trophies that he had stole from high schools from all across the country.
or
"Tomorrow," moaned Esmerelda as she clutched the supine form of her sleeping lover more firmly to her heaving bosom, "to--nay, tonight" -- she tensed as her waters broke and flooded the love-stained sheets -- "I will tell Lord Rampart that I bear his child!"
We could go on and on here but, really, we'd rather read your entries! Oh - and here are ours:
Mary
The hush that slowly fell over the packed crowd as the curtains began to part on the stage of Sleepyside Junior-Senior High quickly turned into screams of dismay as it became apparent that the expected production of 'Much Ado About Nothing' had been replaced by Mr. Lytell, Mr. Maypenny and Old Brom's rendition of 'The Full Monty'.
Ouldn't-way a tory-say old-tay tirely-en in-ay ig-Pay atin-Lay e-bay un-fay?
Kate
When the fifth chicken exploded, Trixie Belden, that spunky girl detective from Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson, New York, knew that, without a doubt - because, after all, exploding chickens leave very little room for doubt - Ben Riker - the blond, attractive, yellow convertible driving, prank playing cousin of her neighbor, and best friend, Honey Wheeler, the former poor-little-rich-girl with whom Trixie intended to one day open a detective agency - was seriously misusing the Alka-seltzer.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's all fun and games until Regan finds the baby oil in the hayloft!
Bobby vomited.
It was a dark and stormy night in Sleepyside but it cleared up by dawn and the day was nice and sunny which was good for everyone except the ants that Bobby Belden was frying with Trixie s magnifying glass.
YOUR TURN! Send your sentence(s) to Mary for inclusion in the challenge. Since we're only dealing with one-liners, all sentences will be added to this page, so no links are necessary. Have fun, but please try to keep your entry clean - we don't want to have to password the page for one sentence. (As you can see from the above, suggestive is A-Okay!)
The Entries:
(New Entries are in RED)
Dana --
Trixie Belden, a sturdy young girl of fourteen with unruly sandy blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a generous nature who loved to solve mysteries, entered Lytell's small general store and promptly decided that she did not WANT to know why the owner was in the back room making excited noises that sounded to her untrained ears like a bleating-sheep caught in the throes of passion.
Amy --
Trixie Belden, girl wonder and her faithful sidekick, Honey Wheeler, jumped into the BWG-mobile and raced out of the Club-Cave, destined to stop Sgt. Freeze from turning Sleepyside into Freezyside.
SJaye --
Trixie Belden was dating Jim Frayne, although she really wanted to be dating Dan Mangan, but Dan Mangan was always so busy chopping wood and trying to straighten out his life that it seemed like there was never time for them to get together so Trixie Belden still went out with Jim Frayne, but both of them knew that their romantic relationship had really ended, the glorious shooting stars and multi-colored fireworks that used to accompany their kisses had been missing for a while but neither Trixie Belden or Jim Frayne knew if they could ever get it back or even if they wanted to get it back, because, after all, when your knees stopped going weak and your stomach stopped flip-flopping when the person you were supposed to be in love with kissed you, then, really, it's time to say goodbye.
It wasn't
that Dan was adverse to showers in general, in fact, he quite
enjoyed them especially if Trixie was able to share the shower with him,
but the shower in the flea-bag motel that they had been forced to stop
at
for the night because they had gotten a flat tire and then the car
overheated and then they found out that all their credit cards had been
cancelled by mistake and between them they only had thirty dollars in
cash,
was beyond disgusting - it reeked of some odor that defied description
(it
might have been urine, but it just as easily could have been something
even
worse) and the fungus growing on the walls sent out black tendrils
reaching
toward the ceiling like outstretched arms and when Dan looked into the
bathroom and saw all this all he had to say was, "Trix, I hope you
remembered to pack socks."
April IZ --
The harum-scarum teenage girl paid for the Sunday paper and a strawberry pop and then left the store, letting the door slam shut behind her, which caused the man behind the counter to remember how her mother had slammed the door in his face and walked out of his life when their passionate affair ended fourteen years previously.
Dear Publisher, I am afraid that I will not be able to provide you with the manuscript for "Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion" or any of the other books we discussed as I have just given birth to quintuplets and will not have any time to write.
Steph --
Jim and Trixie were on a date, one of them in a dress and high heels, the wearer was not Trixie.
Ann N. (GlamGirlPink) --
Trixie Belden -she of the sandy curls, sturdy build and bright blue eyes, blinked awake in the late morning sun , the light as bright as the probing glare of Sgt. Molinson's flashlight and her mouth tasting as sour as the crabapples Bobby had once picked too early.
As she struggled against her restraints, periodically stopping to listen for Huey the Hacker's returning footsteps, Trixie Belden thought of other times when she had been tied up... when kidnapped by the fake Uncle Monty, again by Pierre Lontard and most recently, on a memorable afternoon in Dan's room - but that's another story, morning glory.
JellyBaby --
In any other town, the sight of a blond woman in a flowing white gown whipping along the downtown sidewalks on a battered scooter, chasing an angry chef, a barking Doberman, a laughing clown and three screaming hookers, would have seemed, at the very least, strange, but this town was Sleepyside and this sight was actually considered rather tame, so the pedestrians all merely stepped out of the way and let twenty-seven-year-old private investigator and bride-to-be Trixie Belden do her job, while the ever helpful Mr. Smith, observing the scene from the stoop of his hardware store, went to his phone and called the First Methodist Church to let them know Trixie was going to be late for her wedding again.
Eric --
"But Moms!" sandy haired fourteen year old Trixie Belden wheedled with impatience, "how do we know that now that Saddam Hussein is out of power and that the Taliban has been crushed that Al-Queda sleeper cells operating in the United States won't seek alternate means of finance and send terrorists to steal our cash box at the Bob-White bake sale Saturday?"
Although still wracked with guilt and self loathing, Jim Frayne, after months of therapy, an exorcism perform by a Catholic Cardinal at the Vatican, endless days of meditation at a Tibetan Shaolin Temple, shock treatment by trained professionals at the Pelican Bay Correctional Facility, heavy use of the prescription drugs Haldol and Thorazine and repeated blows to his head with a Louisville Slugger, he was finally coming to grips with the fact that when he accidentally had stumbled on fourteen year old Trixie Belden changing clothes after school one day and seen her in her underwear, that his look had gone from fond to suggestive.
After watching every house in Sleepyside get blown down like stacks of cards, ignited like bugs too close to a flame, and his whole home get flash fried in the shadow of the mushroom cloud that rose over New York; after hearing the screaming and dying of trapped Bob-Whites and family members in collapsed burning buildings; after knowing that the world was being torched by nuclear fire, that civlization was over and that the remenants of humanity were doomed to descend into the feral ways of a new dark age, Jim Frayne found Dan's old leather jacket, Regan's old shotgun, and Brian's old Jalopy and began a new life as a post apocalyptic avenger of the oppressed and downtrodden as: The Glen Road Warrior.
Mary --
A note pinned to the stable door just wasn't enough; how could Dan possibly explain himself in a way that could be understood; in a way that let the world know that what he felt for old Spartan went far, far beyond that of a boy and his horse and ventured into a realm of sensuality that mere words could never hope to capture?
Trixie Belden picked morosely at her ragged cuticles and stared moodily at the mocking sky through her window as she lay curled in the fetal position, the heating pad a cruel reminder that even girl detectives have to get their very first period.
Oh Marge how I ve longed for this moment, Mr. Lytell crooned as he and Miss Trask began the long but incredibly rewarding task of taking a thorough inventory of his back storeroom.
Un Zo eet begins tell me about your mother, the erstwhile psychiatrist said as Robert Bobby Belden reclined awkwardly upon the makeshift divan and pondered all the pent-up hostility that had been building inside of him for so long that he felt exactly like the over-stuffed burrito he had bitten into earlier that had split open, dribbling re-fried beans all down his seersucker suit.
Anne --
Helen Belden sighed in contentment as she worked in the garden, planting dahlias and popping fat, squishy grubs between her fingers.
Stumped, Trixie tried to decide whether to pack pink or blue underwear, "It's not like Jim will see me in them, anyway," she mused, deciding that the pink pair was too feminine.
"Oh
Jim," Trixie sighed, fluttering her eyelashes and running her
hands down Jim's supple chest, "You really are my knight in
shining armor."
Susansuth --
Brian looked around him in disgust, a garbage sack in hand, as he gingerly picked up the half mouse left on the floor of Bobby's room, and vowed to find Ben Riker and make him pay for planting the idea in Bobby's head of taking his par-squirrel concoction one step further and making his own "Mouskedeer".
Diann --
"Oh, James, I shall be ever so glad when this dreadful war is finally over
and we can once again live in a more civilized manner," Beatrix anguished
as her dashing husband brought in the last pair of heavy green velvet
curtains from the upstairs conservatory so that she could finish sewing
the dresses, pantaloons, and breeches for the two-year-old blond-headed
identical twins, Katherina and Julianna, the four-year-old
strawberry-blond identical twins, James III and James IV, and the
six-year-old red-haired fraternal (but still alike in many ways) twins,
Reddy and Patch.
Leaning against the grey stone column outside the First Methodist Church, Trixie thought the day couldn't get any worse, having to wear a skirt, stiffly starched blouse, and dress pumps on Saturday, even if it was to Regan and Joan's wedding, when a black sedan pulled up and the driver leaned out his window and said, "Say, aren't you Nancy Drew?"