# This year's Bulwer-Lytton bad sentence winners announced **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 30, 2009, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426 "2009-06-30T01:49:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/1 "2009-06-30T01:49:36Z")
Here is [one version](http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iQU7UteQMP5mK3lfXqXkn2VkurSgD994LRGO0) of the AP story. I feel bad because I forgot to remind you folks about the deadline this year. I didn’t enter myself because previous winners can’t win again. So I didn’t even think about it until I got asked to be a judge, which was already past the deadline. The winning sentence: “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.” –by David McKenzie I personally preferred (and voted for) the sentence that was the runner up: “The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor–the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn’t use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride.” –by Warren Blair ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/2 "2009-06-30T02:00:19Z")
Jim–your winning entry from two years ago still beats these. [The last 25 years of winning entries](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulwer-Lytton_Fiction_Contest) ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/3 "2009-06-30T02:30:43Z")
_Sigh_ Still didn’t win, even though they called my entry imaginative when they wrote back. Next year, maybe? ---
**Author:** ![Claire\_Beauchamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ec9cab/32.png) [@Claire\_Beauchamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claire_Beauchamp)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/4 "2009-06-30T03:17:40Z")
Yeah, the winner is pretty lame imho. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/5 "2009-06-30T03:50:00Z")
Looks like the judges confused funny and bad, not for the first time. The first is funny, the second more unpleasant to read. **Boyo Jim** ’s effort was more impressive. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/6 "2009-06-30T04:08:08Z")
Moved this to Cafe Society, since writing this bad probably qualifies as an art. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/7 "2009-06-30T08:43:58Z")
Agree with **Marley**. The winning entry is well written. Or at least not very badly written. So it should have lost. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/8 "2009-06-30T09:49:38Z")
[Complete list of winners](http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2009.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/9 "2009-06-30T10:47:09Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Looks like the judges confused funny and bad, not for the first time. The first is funny, the second more unpleasant to read. **Boyo Jim** ’s effort was more impressive. I don’t know; the second certainly has all the hallmarks that set of people’s ‘bad writing’-flags, but in that, it’s pretty formulaic – overly elaborate descriptives, off-beat metaphors, convoluted nesting of sub-clauses, irrelevant thematic non sequiturs, stuff like that. The first is a bit more original in its badness, relying on a jarring mixture of tired clichés, faux-slang, and a misfiring punchline to achieve the full effect. I can definitely see ‘preferring’ this one over the other. ---
**Author:** ![Electric\_Warrior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@Electric\_Warrior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electric_Warrior)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/10 "2009-06-30T11:01:52Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Looks like the judges confused funny and bad, not for the first time. The first is funny, the second more unpleasant to read. **Boyo Jim** ’s effort was more impressive. I think the point is to submit what would be the first sentence to a very bad novel, so it’s not required that the writing be bad. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/11 "2009-06-30T11:13:14Z")
> [@Electric\_Warrior](#): > > I think the point is to submit what would be the first sentence to a very bad novel, so it’s not required that the writing be bad. The winners’ page only says “The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.” Maybe the rules are more involved, and it’s not as if I’m dying to read the screaming contest book, but that one made me laugh by being stupid. The detective winner just plain hurt to read, which I think is worse. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/12 "2009-06-30T11:19:02Z")
I’m considering using a friend to submit again next year, because it’s so much fun to write this stuff, but I don’t want it going into the void with no hope. I came up with this one last night: “His abs didn’t ‘ripple’ nor was he buff; no, his abdomen was solid and carven as a New England chest of drawers, and should New Englanders build abdomens of drawers, which they should because afterall drawers are meant to be worn over abdomens and not chests, his would be one of them, but they don’t; and of his buffness, the less said the better.” ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-years-bulwer-lytton-bad-sentence-winners-announced/501426/13 "2009-06-30T11:31:14Z")
Yeah, the winner reads more like a “Jack Handey Deep Thoughts,” than something tortured.