As you know, the Lyttle Lytton contest is a competition to write the worst possible opening line for a story. The contest judge adds:
As I explain almost every year, this is not just a “write a funny sentence” contest: one of my criteria in deciding which entries will make it onto this page is my sense that some author out there could plausibly have tried starting a novel this way, and not as a joke. I’m not quite as concerned about that for the honorable mentions, but for the winner, it’s very important. And this year’s winner… I have to admit that when I was sixteen, I could have written this, and I would have thought that it was great.
| He slammed the door in my face, loud and sharp, like an acoustic lemon. |
| Erin McCourt |
Which is a great line, because yes, it is plausible that someone might use that line.
The honorable mentions are really interesting to me. Look at this:
When the Egyptians first discovered a method to preserve bodies (known as mummification), he knew this was what he wanted for himself when his time came. — Neil Gunther
This sentence plays with time in a puzzling way. The word “first” prompts readers to expect that this is historical background. But then, with “he knew”, we’re in the thick of the novel’s action! So was our protagonist on hand when mummification was initially developed, as if that were a singular event, and immediately decide it was for him? If so, why does the sentence refer to “the Egyptians” as though they were an outside group? The subtle wrongess of the language of the sentence above is the sort of thing this contest has showcased over the years.
I love this example because this exactly the kind of awkward weirdness that does indeed appear in real sentences in real books.
Many other examples at the link, with two interesting divisions in addition to what I’d call “normal” contest entries: There’s a section for AI-generated entries, and also a section for “found” entries — sentences found in the wild, real sentences really used by real people in some publication, quoted by the person entering them in the contest. Here is one of those:
| It was hot—the kind of heat that makes you long for the weather to cool down. |
| Nineteen Steps (Millie Bobby Brown novel) quoted by Ziva Travers |
And I SWEAR I saw a sentence just like this not that long ago. I should have made a note so I could enter it in this contest, apparently.
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This may be the first I’ve heard of the Lyttle Lytton contest, a spin-off of the more well-known Bulwer-Lytton contest. He added a length limitation, as the name implies.
I could have sworn I vaguely remembered the original BL closing up shop, but it looks like they’re still going. Their 2024 grand prize winner was
“She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.”
which is slightly harder to imagine as a sentence produced by an actual bad writer.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell into his whisky glass, dampening his spirits.
That’s great, Evelyn!