Bulwer Lytton

[Anonymous No.1138352]

I don't know if /lit/ has ever heard of this contest but it's a yearly competition in which you must submit the worst possible opening lines you can imagine, some examples from this year:

>As Holmes, who had a nose for danger, quietly fingered the bloody knife and eyed the various body parts strewn along the dark, deserted highway, he placed his ear to the ground and, with his heart in his throat, silently mouthed to his companion, “Arm yourself, Watson, there is an evil hand afoot ahead.

>Cynthia had washed her hands of Philip McIntyre - not like you wash your hands in a public restroom when everyone is watching you to see if you washed your hands but like washing your hands after you have been working in the garden and there is dirt under your fingernails -- dirt like Philip McIntyre.

So, I was wondering. What are the worst opening lines that /lit/ could invent?

[Anonymous No.1138374]

There are two sides to being a secret agent: one involves high-speed pursuits, explosions and femme fatales, the other involves endless paperwork and filling out forms. This is a story of the latter..

[TyBrax !WvWWh.l.CE No.1138384]

>there is an evil hand afoot ahead

[Anonymous No.1138393]

OP here, another contest winner:

>"Ace, watch your head!" hissed Wanda urgently, yet somehow provocatively, through red, full, sensuous lips, but he couldn't you know, since nobody can actually watch more than part of his nose or a little cheek or lips if he really tries, but he appreciated her warning.

[Anonymous No.1138400]

>>1138384

i lol'd

[TyBrax !WvWWh.l.CE No.1138407]

>>1138400
♥

[Anonymous No.1138424]

>There was a man walking down the halway. he didew;hyuuuu hbe2oi87

[Anonymous No.1138427]

Howard awoke and was shocked to find the predicament he was in at age 35.
'This is not my beautiful house!' he yelled.
'This is not my beautiful wife!' he shouted.
He then looked across the room and saw he left his Talking Heads CD on again.

[Anonymous No.1138443]

The explosion tore through the building and sent the jewel thief plummeting dozens of stories down. The chief of police watched this from the ground and thought that the phrase 'catch that thief' never seemed more apt.

[Anonymous No.1138448]

>>1138352
What do you mean? The first one is pretty funny.

[Anonymous No.1138454]

Crazy Pete was being tied down into the electric chair: first the left foot strap, then the right and the same with his wrist straps. They placed the wet sponge on his head and a single drop of water ran down his temple. As the executioner pulled the switch Pete looked out at the auditorium and saw her: Jackie. And that began a love affair that would last the rest of his life

[Anonymous No.1138457]

>>1138448
>So bad it's good

[Anonymous No.1138459]

>>1138448

Well they're all submitted in by people trying to write the worst possible opening line that could exist for a novel. The competition is based off the most cliche opening: 'it was a dark and stormy night'. It's meant to be funny as it's so terrible. Here's another:

>Gerald began—but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them “permanently” meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash—to pee.

[Anonymous No.1138470]

>>1138454

This must be a really short book if its about a love affair between a convict five seconds away from dying and some chick watching him fry lol

[Anonymous No.1138473]

>>1138454

[Anonymous No.1138474]

>>1138470
>thatsthejoke.jpg

[Anonymous No.1138475]

>>1138473
>>1138470

think I should edit it a bit and submit it for the competition?

[Anonymous No.1138477]

>Jonathan looked across at the man in his car, he had not been there a moment before. He was fascinated by his white baldy head, dotted with the stubbled hair of a shaved dog. In a voice that shattered the ages the bald man said "The english are coming , give me the amulet". He fell into that deathly voice, like he would a fever and thus his journey began.

[Ambassador D'Vinn !!X2oGg5TpEPB No.1138478]

>That that "that" is the "that" which you mean in that sentence in that particular context signifies to me only that "that" was indeed what you mean that one time that you said that sentence _that changed everything_.

I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing, I just wanted to see how many that's I could get in there.

[Anonymous No.1138479]

>>1138454
WINRAR WINRAR WINRAR WINRAR

[Anonymous No.1138491]

>>1138477

didn't make me laugh but that actually would be a valid terrible opening to a novel

[Anonymous No.1138510]

>Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven--fueled by a single accelerant--and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf Romeo.

The 1988 winner

[Anonymous No.1138555]

>>1138477
Wait that sounds like something out of those godawful Amber books.

[Anonymous No.1138559]

>Professor Schama hurriedly delivered his lecture at Berkeley University. It were as though he was burning from the fires of anticipation, desperate to receive the communal wafer of relief that was his final divine paragraph - a fitting end, if there was any, to his symphonic masterpiece of academic display. He had only two hours to get to the BBC's imposing New York Head-Quarters to record 'Yet Another History Programme', and the knowledge of this was evidently weighing him down like some Stone of Scone, misappropriated for a far more sinister purpose than its creators had originally intended it for. He was caught like a deer in the headlights of academic celebrity; helplessly arrested in the stockades of anxiety, he was made an all-too public victim of serendipity. Not unlike Henry I, Schama thought to himself, he had a problem that had to be dealt with, just like any king of intellect would have to deal with a Thomas Becket of public criticism.

[Anonymous No.1138568]

Is it bad I would love to read all these 'books' judging from their opening lines?

[Anonymous No.1138579]

>>1138559

SIMON SCHAMA STRIKES AGAIN!

[Anonymous No.1138588]

One sentence only faggots.

[Anonymous No.1138629]

Security guard Emile Emerson eschewed eating out usually, as having a bad experience in one's childhood negates any desire to repeat such an event does to a person (the 48 year old security guard could certainly fit that group of people with poor Freudian beginnings that acquired phobias that manifested themselves in early to late young adulthood, and would forever be affected by said phobias for the rest of their lives) yet for some reason unbeknownst to him he was drawn into that playpen of pain, that fast foodery of fools, that immaculate eatery of emasculated men known colloquially inside the head of Mr.Emerson as the danse McDonald: the only joint in south Mississippi to serve happy meals.

[Anonymous No.1138643]

She was heaven itself; her dress was of the finest Morroccan silk with patterns of forget-me-not's adorning her beautiful body.

[Anonymous No.1138650]

>>1138629

It's like I'm really reading Farley Mowat.

[Anonymous No.1138654]

It was too late; the bomb was already inside the President's scrotum.

[Anonymous No.1138751]

It was carnage: burning fuel falling from the sky, bodies dropping from the towers, screams surrounding him. He did not know why the chaos had happened or why the planes had hit the towers. He was as confused as any New Yorker that morning. But for Lucky the Dalmation, this was his time to be a hero.

[Anonymous No.1138760]

Caitlyn had a heart that was as cold as a dead bluefish---a dead bluefish with some Chanel Number 5 dabbed on it.

[Anonymous No.1138765]

Working in a dangerous profession like I do, I know there is a great chance that one morning I will wake up to discover I was murdered in my sleep.

[Anonymous No.1138815]

>>1138765

I actually quite like that, you should enter it for fun

[Anonymous No.1140049]

>She wasn't really my type, a hard-looking but untalented reporter from the local cat box liner, but the first second that the third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and, humming "The Twelfth of Never," I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth.

1993 winner

[Anonymous No.1140055]

>My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt - sleeve-less, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

[Anonymous No.1140059]

>>1140055
I haven't read Twilight, but for some strange reason, I know that this sentence is from it.

[Anonymous No.1140069]

It was a dark and stormy night as a result our hero, Bernard Clarke was stuck in the airport for another nine hours

[Anonymous No.1140092]

John came into the room; Margaret yelped in surprise.