Anonymom

You may have a novel inside you.  But perhaps you’re not the next Hemingway or Steinbeck.  Instead, maybe your prose resembles that of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton and “struggles against the darkness.”  If your sentences ramble and meander, extend with copious and creative use of punctuation, making a muddled mess of a storyline (much like this sentence), then rejoice.  The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest beckons.

You have to be seriously good at writing god-awful fiction if you want to wear the Bulwer-Lytton crown.  The contest seeks the worst opening line to a novel.  If readers don’t want to continue past your first sentence, then you’ve succeeded.

Create as many terrible sentences as you wish.  Submit them all.  There are no limits.  No story too outlandish, no words too taboo.  The official deadline for entries is April 15, a day that conjures up all kinds of tall tales from American taxpayers.  However, the deadline is sometimes extended until winners are announced in late June.

While there is only one grand-prize winner, bad writing comes in all genres, so try submitting to the children’s category.  Perhaps puns are your forté—this contest encourages vile ones.  Fantasy, adventure, historical fiction!  Contest owner Scott Rice wants it all—badly.

Contest Rules and Submission Guidelines

2007 Bulwer-Lytton Winners

I’ve submitted a half dozen entries this year, including “The Vampire Kitten”:

Rudy’s feline senses tingled as he watched Minerva pour a glass of milk, thrusting his tongue outward involuntarily, urging him to inexplicably lick his hand and smooth his cowlick, but he could not let Minerva know about the vampire kitten that had sucked his neck—attacking him with a feral ferocity that belied its adorable whiskered face—and how the meowing and purring that had become an integral part of their lovemaking was really just an injection of half-dead Calico.

I hope it’s as bad as I think it is!  But I really don’t think it’s the best—I mean, worst—I’ve created.  Perhaps you’ll see me on the 2008 winners list.

So please, do not delay.  Enter the contest.  Let the Lyttony of bad writing begin!