WE'VE ALL HAD OUR SHARE of bad leads.
But we probably have done no worse than the drivel spewed by Garrison Spik.
Spik, 41, a communications director and writer from Washington, D.C., wrote the absolute worst lead for a novel, and in doing so, captured the top prize in San Jose State University's 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/), according to The Associated Press.
Entrants to the annual contest are asked to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. The top winner in each of several categories receives a $250 prize.
Here's Spik's winning entry (if you can call it a winner):
“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'“
Among the other terrible prose recognized by the judges at San Jose State was this one, by Alex Hall of Greeley, Colo.
“'Toads of glory, slugs of joy,' sang Groin the dwarf as he trotted jovially down the path before a great dragon ate him because the author knew that this story was a train wreck after he typed the first few words.”
And there's this charmer from Beth Fand Incollingo of Haddon Heights, New Jersey:
“Like a mechanic who forgets to wipe his hands on a shop rag and then goes home, hugs his wife, and gets a grease stain on her favorite sweater — love touches you, and marks you forever.”
The contest is named after Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel “Paul Clifford” famously begins, “It was a dark and stormy night.” *