Deliberate awfulness

[serai]

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Ever hear of the Bulwer-Lytton contest? It's a competition held each year, to see who can come up with the very worst opening line to a novel. (The contest was named for Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the originator of that perennielly dreadful opener, "It was a dark and stormy night...")

Over at TORn a while back, someone initiated an LOTR version of this venerable contest. Below is the entry I posted.




"As within a vaulted palace of gold, with ceilings laid in ivory and chased gems, would dwell a pasha or sultan at his ease, enjoying the warm and heady breezes wafting the scents of spices over the fields, or as in a cool and labyrinthine cave of darkest blue entwined with the waving, weedy reeds of the sea might dwell a contented seacow or some leviathan of the deep, slowly treading the ancient ways of oceanic mystery, or as within that chambered miracle of nature, shining pearlescent shell of delicated yet prodigious strength, does dwell the noble nautilus, happy in its comforting abode, so too within the borders of that happy land known as the Shire, in a quaint village, settled, plump and happy, in this hole, the very hole where our story begins, there lived, better off than some and more content than many, a hobbit."




Anyone care to join in?

Comments

[aussiepeach.livejournal.com]

My God, that's so awful I can't top it! Love the Bulwer-Lyttons though. Okay then..

Suddenly, Bilbo Baggins realised it was nearly his eleventy-first birthday and would require a large party which would require him to put on his gold magic ring where he would suddenly and amazingly disappear requiring his nephew (or cousin by rights both ways) to take the gold-as-glittering gold stuff Ring and go on on onerous Questy type thing where he would end up nearly carking it before making it to the Havens with a lot of claptrap in between.

[celandine-g.livejournal.com]

That's a great Executive Summary. Why waste time reading all those words that follow. You've said it all. :)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

That is really a dreadful, dreadful summary. Well done!

[notabluemaia.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAAAHHHH! *averts eyes*

Hee!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

*evil grin*

She's blind! She's blind!

*cackles madly*

[slipperieslope.livejournal.com]

LOL

There is a part of my brain that actually enjoys reading turgid to splitting prose, I feel a ridiculous amount of glee when I can follow the convoluted thought to the end of the writer's sentence. How sick is that, attaining a plastic pearl at too great a price ; )

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Heehee! I was inspired by Richard Adams, whose book Shardik is one of my favorite pseudo-epics. But damn if that book doesn't have one of those types of sentences on every damn page. Some of them take up an entire paragraph!

[frodosweetstuff.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

I have a children's book that starts with "It was a dark and stormy night." Little Frodo loves it. And it's called "Kiss goodnight, Sam" which is why I love it, too. *has slashy thoughts*. :D