The annual Bulwer-Lytton contest challenges writers to come up with worse opening lines than nineteenth-century writer, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who opened his novel Paul Clifford with the famous words:

“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.”

The contest has grown in popularity and now receives over 10,000 entries in many different categories. Here are my own entries over the years:

Puns

• Sister Mary Theresa went to Mexico to clothe the needy, cure the sick, and feed the starving, but it wasn’t until after her first native meal that she truly became a woman with emission.
• It didn’t take Inspector Watkins long to realize the Case of the Confectioner’s Daughter was going to bring him nothing but truffles.
• Filbert P. Pistachio and his wife Macadamia considered themselves eccentric, but to their friends they were just nuts.
• To an orchard magnate like Jean-Claude, Sofia was the perfect woman:  eyes like two blueberries, cheeks as red as two apples, lips like two cherries, breasts as round as two perfect cantaloupes–to him, she was a portrait in pears.
• The nomads of the French countryside were famous for their corn and fruit, and were thrilled when they heard Marc Antony was arriving to show them how to grow more crops, but to their shock and dismay Antony’s troops immediately confiscated their harvest and Antony himself proclaimed: “French roamin’ country men, send me your ears; I come to seize your berries, not to raise them!”

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

• Star Command Captain Jock Steele stared at his new First Officer, Desiree Smithington, her blue eyes twinkling like the stars outside their spaceship did not, because they were in space where there is no air, unlike in the ship, except for in Steele’s lungs from which Desiree had taken his breath.
• Revulath decided to keep his day job, which, since he lived on the side of Antares V that always faced the sun, wasn’t that surprising.
• Lucifer sweltered on his throne, mopping his horned forehead with a sweat-soaked rag and thinking yet again, “Man, it’s hot as hell in here.”

Detective

• On stakeout with his young, brand-new partner, Detective Johnson quickly realized that “the lights were on, but nobody was home”–which was not surprising since criminals never worry about saving energy.
• The case ate at Detective John Martin’s gut like the week-old lasagna he had for yesterday’s dinner and which still lay in his stomach like an unemployed brother-in-law, causing him to chew laxative tablets like Pez and wash them down with shots of Milk of Magnesia, waiting for it to work its lumbering way through his intestines like a pasta and cheese spelunker–ah, but I digest.

Romance

• It was a dark and romantic night, and John stared into Monica’s moonlit eyes, which glowed like a pair of 500,000-candlepower searchlights, but without all the bugs, and they used a free sex near me to meet each other.
• Marguerite strode into the room, tall, elegant, and a real head-turner, now that she’d finally passed her chiropractic exam.

Mainstream

• Beth was a hearty woman who laced her speech with more curses than a longshoreman, though a longshoreman would probably use a word like “peppered” since “laced” sounds kinda gay.
• Slim pulled his horse to a halt, his throat as dry as the desert sand around him which seemed to be mostly in his mouth.

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