Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Bulwer-Lytton challenge

“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)

The challenge presented to you in this thread is to write and post a furry-themed Bulwer-Lytton contest entry. Since 1983, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has been attracting writers trying to do worse than the famous opening line quoted above. The contest has a website where among other things you may view past winners of the annual contest.

In a nutshell, the idea is to come up with the worst possible opening sentence to a story. Here you get to think of all the eye-rolling, stomach-turning things we try not to do, and cram as much of it as you can into one sentence. I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with.

Here’s one to start things off…

Sunlight dribbled down the banners like spooge on a murrsuit as the chairman sauntered into the hall, joined by the crimefighting duo of Zig Zag and Chester Ringtail, who followed the acrid stench to its source where they beheld the sickly, begrimed shell of a vulpine rocking on her derrière, reciting the question, "How can I enjoy my sandwich when you keep asking what the fox says?" like a broken record.

Every time the coyote opened her mouth, I wished another spider would crawl in there, like that time at the fair where she’d been mocking me over her key lime pie; and I had helpfully ignored the creeping little creature that was scooped up, her eye too distracted in her mocking to notice the arachnid garnish, and how I wished one more time to see her confused face burst into horrified realization, and had I just aid all that out loud?!