[bksvol-discuss] Re: My favorite Bulwer-Lytton sentence

  • From: "Shelley L. Rhodes" <guidinggolden@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 11:30:22 -0400

The ability to write the worse beginning sentence to a novel is the intent of 
the contest, but some are just well, good, smile even if they would never, 
never, ever, in a million years work in an actual novel.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kim Friedman 
  To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 6:09 AM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: My favorite Bulwer-Lytton sentence


  Oh, Carrie, that is such a howler. I'm not fond of that either. Did you 
actually scream about it? I don't know whether to admire the writer for his 
ingenuity in coming up with the thing or to throw hard objects at him. I wonder 
if he is really a good writer deliberately setting out to write badly here. 
Regards, Kim aka Ellinder.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carrie Karnos
  Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 7:23 PM
  To: Bookshare Vol Group
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] My favorite Bulwer-Lytton sentence


  About halfway through this sentence, I start screaming, "Make it stop! Make 
it stop!" For me, this is THE worst opening line ever:


  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.

  --Wm. W. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Port Townsend, Washington (1993 Winner)
  See what I mean??

  Carrie


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