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The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Where “WWW” means “Wretched
Writers Welcome” |
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"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) |
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Lyttony
of Grand Prize Winners Bulwer-Lytton's Ancestral Estate Sticks and Stones [Updated:
8/14/10] |
· Mariann
Simms, winner of the 2003 contest, writes about the BLFC in her blog · Celine Shinbutsu:
Fantasy Category winner's blog from Japan · Suite.101.com
interviews 2008
Winner, Garrison Spik
(August 16, 2008) · Suite.101.com interviews the
Grand Panjandrum (August 16, 2008) · Guillaume Destot interviews the the Grand Panjandrum (2002) · "The Great
Bulwer-Lytton Debate" The Guardian Bulwer-Lytton's Bicentennial
Birthday Celebration at Knebworth
House, May 20-23, 2003. Pictures
STICKS AND STONES:
History of the BLFC Since 1982 the English Department
at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest,
a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the
opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The contest (hereafter
referred to as the BLFC) was the brainchild (or Rosemary's baby) of Professor
Scott Rice, whose graduate school excavations unearthed the source of the
line "It was a dark and stormy night." Sentenced to write a seminar
paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he chose the man with the funny
hyphenated name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who was best known for perpetrating
The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene Aram, Rienzi, The Caxtons,
The Coming Race, and--not least--Paul Clifford, whose famous
opener has been plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle Snoopy. No less
impressively, Lytton coined phrases that have become common parlance in our
language: "the pen is mightier than the sword," "the great
unwashed," and "the almighty dollar" (the latter from The
Coming Race, now available from the Broadview Press). Conscripted numerous times to be a
judge in writing contests that were, in effect, bad writing contests but with
prolix, overlong, and generally lengthy submissions, he struck upon the idea
of holding a competition that would be honest and -- best of all -- invite
brief entries. Furthermore, it had the ancillary advantage of one day
allowing him to write about himself in the third person. By campus standards, the first
year of the BLFC was a resounding success, attracting three entries. The
following year, giddy with the prospect of even further acclaim, Rice went
public with the contest and, with the boost of a sterling press release by
Public Information Officer Richard Staley, attracted national and
international attention. Staley's press release drew immediate front-page
coverage in cultural centers like Boston, Houston, and Miami. By the time the
BLFC concluded with live announcement of the winner, Gail Cane, on CBS
Morning News (since defunct through no fault of the BLFC), it had drawn
coverage from Time, Smithsonian, People Magazine, The Wall Street Journal,
The Manchester Guardian, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian
Radio, and the BBC. Most important, over 10,000 wretched writers had tried
their hands at outdoing Bulwer's immortal opener, with the best entries soon
appearing in the first of a series published by Penguin Books, It Was a Dark
and Stormy Night (1984). Since 1983 the BLFC has continued
to draw acclaim and opprobrium. Thousands continue to enter yearly, the judging has been covered by all the major
American television networks, and journalists and pundits from Charles Osgood
to George F. Will have commented on the BLFC phenomenon. And each year the
winners continue to be announced by both national and international media,
including such worthies as the BBC, Australian Radio, Radio South Africa, and
Radio Blue Danube from Vienna. To sustain the momentum, the Penguin
collections of entries have reached five, each an indispensable addition to
the bookshelves of discerning readers and collectors (lamentably, they are
now all out of print, a commentary on the misplaced and mercenary values of
modern publishers). In the meantime, Lytton's fame has
not rested solely on his literary accomplishments. In 1989 he came (albeit
unbeknownst) to our attention when his ancestral estate at Knebworth was chosen by Tim Burton as
the setting for "stately Wayne Manor" in the movie Batman. White
water enthusiasts will also be gratified to know that the rafting capital of British Columbia, located at
the dramatic confluence of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers, takes its name
from our hero, acknowledging his tenure as Interior Secretary, when he was
responsible for building numerous roads in Australia and Western Canada. In
the off chance you are interested in the assessment of species diversity in
the Montane Cordillera Ecozone
near Lytton, B.C., go here. In the
greater likelihood that you do not give a rat's patootie
about the biogeography for selected taxa belonging to some of the major
phylogenetic groups in the eastern Rockies and western Cascades of British
Columbia, we suggest that you loiter at our site. The
rules to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are childishly simple: Each entry must consist of a
single sentence but you may submit as many entries as you wish. (One fellow
once submitted over 3,000 entries.) Sentences may be of any length BUT
WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT ENTRIES NOT GO BEYOND 50 OR 60 WORDS, and entries
must be "original" (as it were) and previously unpublished. Surface mail entries should be
submitted on index cards, the sentence on one side and the entrant's name,
address, and phone number on the other. E-mail entries should be in the
body of the message, NOT IN AN ATTACHMENT (and it would be really swell if
you submitted your entries in Arial 12 font). One e-mail may contain multiple
entries. Entries will be judged by categories,
from "general" to detective, western, science fiction, romance, and
so on. There will be overall winners as well as category winners. The official deadline is April 15
(a date that Americans associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories).
The actual deadline may be as late as early June. The contest accepts submissions
every day of the livelong year. Wild Card Rule: Resist the
temptation to work with puns like "It was a stark and dormy night." Finally, in keeping with the
gravitas, high seriousness, and general bignitude
of the contest, the grand prize winner will receive . . . a pittance. Send your entries to: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Inflict
your entries electronically, HERE (and please include your name, phone number, and
addresses--Gastropoda and e-mail [Note: this data is for our contact information, not for
public consumption.] |
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This site is maintained by Scott Rice, in consultation with Julianne Presson
(design).
Copyright
1997-2010 Scott Rice
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED