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A sentence for a dark and stormy night....
Published: 7/26/2011 3:57 PM
Last Modified: 7/26/2011 3:57 PM


Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which participants try to write the worst opening sentence of an imaginary work of fiction, has announced its 2011 winner.

Some of the past winners have been marvels of Proustian prolixity, but this year's victor managed to offend the judges' sensibilities with a mere 26 words, setting the record for the shortest grand prize winner since the contest's inception in 1982.

Sue Fondrie, an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, came up with:

Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.

The Bulwer-Lytton concert is named for the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose works include "The Last Days of Pompeii" and "Paul Clifford," which opens with the immortal phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night."

Bulwer-Lytton also coined a number of phrases still in use today, from "The pen is mightier than the sword" to "the pursuit of the almighty dollar" to "the great unwashed."

Karen Arutunoff, a Tulsan, made the list of "Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions" with this entry:

All the signs, both actual and imagined, made it immensely clear there was trouble ahead for Marlene and, yet, her childlike sense of hope that maybe he was “the one” kept her foot on the accelerator pedal of life even when she came to the “bridge out” warning hand written in Magic Marker on Myron’s Polident cup.

Nichols Hills resident Betty Replogle earned a Dishonorable Mention in the Purple Prose category for this:

LaTrina—knowing he must live—let her hot, wet tongue slide slowly over Gladiator’s injured ear, the taste reminding her of the late June flavor of a snow chain that had been removed from a tire and left to rust on the garage floor without being rinsed off.


For the complete list, go to tulsaworld.com/bulwer-lytton


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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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