Why is "It was a dark and stormy night" so bad?

[rsa]

I fail to understand why the sentence “It was a dark and stormy night” has become so famous (or infamous) as the worst opening line of a novel. I always assumed it was because night is always dark – is that the reason? But there are clear “bright” moonlit nights, so I never thought the line was so horrible. Not great writing perhaps, but I could find many worse examples in current books.

Please educate me.

[Telemark]

Here is the full line:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

You tell me.

[Otto]

AFAIK the sentence was made (in)famous for being the opening line of Snoopy’s many failed attempts at writing a novel. A quick Google turns up that it actually came from a real novel, Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (I had no idea). That site is the home page for an annual “worst first sentence” contest, the prize for which is a print of Snoopy on his dog house typing out the sentence.

[rsa]

Oh! I had never seen the complete opening line. Yep, pretty bad.

[Kamino_Neko]

‘It was a dark and stormy night’ isn’t actually the bad line. It’s the first 7 words of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton first sentence in Paul Clifford.

That first sentence is the famous bad opener that inspired the creation of The Bulwer-Lytton contest - a contest to come up with the most tortured first sentence for a novel, possible.

Some of the entries beat Bulwer-Lytton’s (reproduced at the top of that page) by a mile.

[Manduck]

I am not a writer, but I think in general that it is a bad idea to start a novel with a pronoun.

(I am now bracing for a flood of examples of great novels that start with a pronoun)

[Lisa-go-Blind]

@Manduck

I am not a writer, but I think in general that it is a bad idea to start a novel with a pronoun.

(I am now bracing for a flood of examples of great novels that start with a pronoun)

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … "

[Max_Carnage]

Here’s Snoopy’s version:

@snoopy

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed.

Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!

While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.
Part II
A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.

At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.

Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?

The intern frowned.

“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch was saved.

The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the coffee shop. he had learned about medicine, but more importantly, he had learned something about life.
THE END

[foolsguinea]

I, personally, hate 19th-Century verbosity & overdescription. I despise Poe, for example. But I think that’s a damn good opening sentence (the parenthetical is questionable, admittedly), certainly for the expectations of a 19th-Century novel, where language is used to describe what later generations would use cinematography to show.

None of this absolves Bulwer-Lytton for, well, being Bulwer-Lytton.

[Manduck]

@Lisa-go-Blind

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … "

Aw, shaddap

[rjung]

@Max Carnage

Here’s Snoopy’s version:

Now we know why beagles shouldn’t write novels.

[Chronos]

It should be noted that this (without the dashed, semicoloned, and parenthetical parts) is also the opening sentence of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, a very good book. But of course, L’Engle was aware of the earlier usage and included it as a bit of a joke.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock also parodied it in one of his Nonsense Novels: “Gertrude the Governess or Simple Seventeen”

Synopsis of previous chapters: There are no previous chapters.

It was a wild and stormy night on the West Coast of Scotland. This, however, is immaterial to the present story, as the scene is not laid in the West of Scotland. For the matter of that the weather was just as bad on the East Coast of Ireland.

The next paragraph perhaps had some influence on later British humorists:

But the scene of this narrative is laid in the South of England and takes place in and around Knotacentinum Towers (pronounced as if written Nosham Taws), the seat of Lord Knotacent (pronounced as if written Nosh).

But it is not necessary to pronounce either of these names in reading them.

[AtomicDog]

After reading Snoopy’s version

But what about the King?

[Futile_Gesture]

@Manduck

I am not a writer, but I think in general that it is a bad idea to start a novel with a pronoun.

(I am now bracing for a flood of examples of great novels that start with a pronoun)

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”

[Futile_Gesture]

Isn’t “It was a dark and stormy night…” simply used as a generically cliche start to a novel? Nothing much wrong with the phrase itself, just a bit hackneyed. It’s also a bit of a cliche to use the weather as a foreshadowing metaphor for events that inevitably will follow in the first chapter.

[Roland_Orzabal]

[my grandfather]

It was a dark and stormy night, and around the campfire sat a band of robbers. All was quiet, until one of them spoke up and said: “I will tell you a story.” And here is what he told them:

“It was a dark and stormy night, and around the campfire sat a band of robbers. All was quiet, until one of them spoke up and said: ‘I will tell you a story.’ And here is what he told them: (etc, etc…)”

[/my grandfather]

[Manduck]

@Futile Gesture

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”

Pride and Prejudice?

Anyway, I don’t have enough time to stick out my tongue individually at everybody who proves me wrong, so everybody just select one from the bunch:
:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p
:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p
:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p
Please, no shoving.

[mouthbreather]

Pronouns to go…

“It was a pleasure to burn.”
"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. "
“It is a sin to write this.”
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. " (One can argue the greatness of this one, but I love it).
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

I’ll take half of the bottom row, Manduck.

[Askia]

Roland Orzabal. LOL!! Whew… that was a good laugh… made even funnier because I know someday soon I’ll USE that little story! Tell your grandfather thanks, wherever he is.

There are some real doozies among this year’s Bulwer-Lytton winners and runners-up. Check them out.