I understand that this sentence has become a cliche and is always being held up as an example of horrid writing. There is even an annual award given in its name for recent examples of terrible opening lines to a novel. But I’ve never understood what is wrong with it. Anyone who used it today to begin a book would be laughed out of his agent’s office, but when readers of 150 years ago came across it, I am sure they didn’t say “Yuck, what a terrible way to begin a book.” On the contrary, I suspect it pulled them into the story because it is very dramatic. Can someone explain to me why, of all the opening sentences of all the books in the world, this one has had such ridicule heaped upon it?
I think it was as much the terrible follow-on sentences. I can’t remember exactly, but I think he continues “… in England (for that is where our story is set).”
I imagine it goes to the core of the “rule” “show, don’t tell.” A good writer would have showed us how the storms looked, how they fell, how they affected the protagonist, etc.
Just my guess. Search–I know this topic has come up in threads before.
Sir Rhosis
The Wikipedia article contains the complete sentence:
I looked it up after I posted. Seems he did show, he just did so in a manner (lots of dependent clauses) that is “purple” by today’s standards.
Sir Rhosis
It is mentioned in the article I linked to, but it deserves to be explicitly pointed out: Snoopy deserves a lot of the credit for turning the opening “It was a dark and stormy night” into a joke/cliche.
Whenever I see that line, I’m reminded of a horrible “joke” from childhood:
“It was a dark and stormy night, and the captain said to his wife, ‘tell me a story’. And this is what she said: It was a dark and stormy night, and the captain said to his wife, ‘tell me a story’. And this is what she said. It was a dark and stormy night…”
Snoopy deserves some credit, but I’ll bet Schulz’s inspriation was not directly from Bulwer-Lytton but from a intermediary source.
The Canadian humorist Stpehen Leacock was once the most famous humorist in the world, and would certainly have been someone familiar to a young cartoonist-in-training.
One of his Nonsense Novels from 1911, was Gertrude the Governess. It starts:
This is one of the most famous parodies in literature. (Some of the other most famous parodies are other chapters in the book.) I’d give Leacock a lot of credit for Snoopy’s writing.
I hate when I see that phrase, because it reminds me I once, among other volumes, had a signed copy of the “Peanuts” book by the same name, which was destroyed in a flood. I’ve no idea if Charles Schulz autographs are valuable or not, but it still bothers me.
You may now want to do damage to yourself.
Of course yours may not have been a hardcover with dust jacket, which increases the price tremendously. Still…
Gawd, that’s funny! Odd when something that old kicks my funnybone in a “funny” rather than a patronising “given the times it was funny” manner, but it still must have something to do with my being stuck in the late 19th century. Married an older woman, dontchaknow. She’s stuck in the MID 19th century.
There are two kinds of people: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say "There are two kinds of people: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say "There are two kinds of people: those who say there is no such thing as infinite recursion, and those who say …
Make it stop!!
sob
All those are topped by John Barth’s “Frame Tale,” which cannot be recounted properly in two dimensions: It consists of the words “Once upon a time there was a story that began” pasted on a Moebius strip.
Don’t forget, of course, Madeleine l’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which starts out that way (in all seriousness) and continues without purple prose, and which predates Snoopy’s literary efforts.
Snoopy’s book, by the way, was very briefly in print itself, as a book with the title “It was a Dark and Stormy Night”. It featured the Peanuts strips mentioning the book, and it had a reproduction of the cover as described by Snoopy (and as drawn by, IIRC, Linus).
There are two kinds of people: those who say there are two kinds of people and those who don’t. 
There are two kinds of people: those who say there are two kinds of people and those who like to take the opposite view. :smack:
There are two kinds of people: those who say there are two kinds of people and those who are getting on a bit and can’t remember how their sentences are meant to finish… 
I am stealing this for my random sig tag collection!
Having read all the replies to this thread, I still don’t get why people hold it up as an example of “Bad writing”.
It was a dark and stormy night immediately puts me in mind of a moonless, coal-black night, lashed by a storm, and the rest of the opening sentence further serves to set the scene in rain-swept London. Seems perfectly functional to me; I’d certainly read on to find out more.
Then again, I liked Bulletproof Monk and Kung Pow: Enter The Fist, so I’m probably not the best person to be offering opinions on this sort of thing anyway… 
It might be a little too comma-y, but I don’t get the hate, either. There are far shittier lines out there. I thought it painted an interesting picture, myself. I wish someone would explain who said it was soooo horrible and why.
My creative writing instructor held gave it as an example of redundancy. Of course it was dark–it was night (and stormy, so it’s not like you’re going to have full moonlight). You don’t have to tell me twice in the same sentence.
But this is the thing- it’s entirely possible to have a bright, moonlight night which isn’t actually all that dark, and “stormy” suggests that it’s not only raining, there’s a gale blowing and being outside would be somewhat unpleasant at that time… like Kalhoun, I just don’t understand why people think it’s such a terrible line, or rank it in any kind of “Worst Ever” lists.