![]() ![]() The next year, Rice opened it up to the general public. In its first year, held only on campus, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest received a grand total of three submissions. To be fair to Bulwer-Lytton, Rice now acknowledges that the author was likely playing with the phrase: "It was a dark and stormy night." Rice says Bulwer-Lytton was being playful and creative. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was started in 1982 by Scott Rice, who is now Professor Emeritus with the English Department at San Jose State University.Īfter doing a seminar paper on Bulwer-Lytton and judging " writing contests that were, in effect, bad writing contests but with prolix, overlong, and generally lengthy submissions," Rice decided to start his own contest where the writing was intentionally bad and preferably brief. Now, every year, writers across the world compete to win a writing award named in his honour. The aim of the contest: to write the best opening sentence for the worst possible story. ![]() The Peanuts character typed out books on top of his dog house, always starting them with that same sentence.īut the infamous line, referred to by some as " the literary posterchild for bad story starters," was first penned 188 years ago.Įdward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton was an English novelist and playwright who opened his 1830 novel Paul Clifford with the 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. If the line sounds familiar to someone who never read the book in English class, then it may be from its popularization by everyone's favourite world famous author: Snoopy. Schulz's 1971 book 'Snoopy and It Was a Dark and Stormy Night'. ![]()
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