Jul
01
Is this really bad writing?
Published in Prizes by Nicholas Clee
Someone should start a contest for the actual worst opening sentences of novels. The annual Bulwer-Lytton contest invites people to create their own examples of bad writing, and each year receives entries that are more outlandish, thus losing its satirical edge. The 2009 winner, from David McKenzie, 55, of Federal Way, Washington, is:
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.
Better, in my view, was the winning sentence in the Detective category, from Eric Rice of Wisconsin:
She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.
Better, in my view, was the winning sentence in the Detective category, from Eric Rice of Wisconsin:
She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.
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