if you can't write a genius novel...

write a truly awful one:

Subject: Dark & Stormy

This year's 10 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, aka "Dark and
Stormy Night Contest" (run by the English Dept. of San Jose State
University), wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel:

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break
wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned,
unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep
azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied
for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that
defied description."

7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept
along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism,
was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon
to become the woman he loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her
from eeking out a living at a local pet store."

4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins
often do."

3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the
corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the
meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger
and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal
tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS...

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along
the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle
window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder,
gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside
her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming
madly, 'You lied!"

 

why? i'm a genious...
i've got a book published, (dec 2005)
yahhoo!!!

 

why? well, if you CAN'T write a brilliant novel...

but honestly, good for you! that's awesome. i, however, am no genius. i'm not even good enough to think up truly brilliant trash. i think i'll make a few bucks writing romance novels.

 

i'm not genious as well
but this thought helps me in some ways!
I guess you're very talanted, but don't know about it yet

 

what's your book about? is it on amazon or anything like that? i love picking up books like that.

 

i must admit my book is kinda trivial
that story happened to my friends
it called "Our Blocks"
i wrote a story about four friends who were little bastards and losers and became very successful men, one of him died in Italy, he was BASE jumper
in fact i wrote it cause we all feel guilty for his death

 

That sounds like a Robert Rankin line.

I did try to write the worst thing possible once, but I got too into it and started to enjoy it too much.

 

yep. i wallow in horrible rotten prose. it makes me happy. the tackier the better.

the book sounds neato, ann-akim. i'll look for it. why do you guys feel guilty for his death?

 

And so she sits, poised in front of her computer, reading the words as they trickled down her screen. "Tacky" writing it was called, brillance is what she saw. But no one quite understood what she was talking about...

Uh, yes. Tacky is beautiful. I think 6 is my favorite by far though.

-bird-

 

'trickled down her screen." lol. awesome. makes me think of this one time i accidently spewed coffee all over my monitor.

 

I got one that i used to start a short story once-

"There is a difference between a black hole and a quantum black hole. Trust me, if it was a black hole, we would already be dead."

 

very nice. my ex started one of his essays "Ogden Nash grew up all over the East Coast."

 

he came through very hard times and we left him
he moved away to Italy and we didn't know about it
untill he died

 

was it suicide? sounds to me like moving to italy would be a good thing.

 

no not suicide
accident