Slaughtered sparrows simile wins 2011 bad writing contest

[sinkingfeeling]

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43893455/ns/today-books/

Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wis., won the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for her sentence comparing forgotten memories to dead sparrows, said San Jose State University Prof. Scott Rice. The contestant asks writers to submit the worst possible opening sentences to imaginary novels.

Fondrie wrote: "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 University of Wisconsin professor's 26-word sentence is the shortest grand prize winner in the contest's 29-year history, Rice said.

[sybylla]

1. Definitely well done.

Clearly it takes a teacher to know a bad sentence.

[UrbScotty]

2. "Gerald began — but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent

of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them “permanently” meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash — to pee."

;-)

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/lyttony.htm