Posted by JerryLee on January 04, 2007 at 15:20:34:
Well, the results are in for the most important fiction-writing contest in the land, the Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest. And there are some lesson in there for all of us. Below are some examples:
1. Don't insert descriptions that detract from the ongoing story:
Gripping his six-shot Colt Python with 8-inch barrel and Royal Blue finish, and tightening the straps on his Paratec Speed 2000 parachute, Jake leaped from the left aft hatchway of the tumbling, green-and-silver, twin-engined Embraer Lineage 1000, which had seating for nineteen passengers.
Johnathan Munroe
Halifax, NS
2. Omniscient POV distances:
The cold, cynical wind molested the auburn tresses of the fair damsel clinging to the steel of the rail trestle, from which vantage point she could see that it was a long way down to where she would land if she fell, which, given the velocity she would attain and the unfriendly pavement leering up at her, added to soft tissue's low tolerance for sudden impacts, would be a very bad thing.
Pat Hricko
Nicholson, PA
3. Don't get carried away with facts you got from the internet (darlings):
If Gilbert had known then what he knew now, he would have seen that the dilemma facing him--to do a good deed for the wrong reason or to do a bad deed for the right reason--had long ago been shown to be two sides of the same coin by the philosopher known as Theragora of Crete even though he was not from Crete at all, but from Malta, which of course was not called Malta when Theragora was there.
Hubert Kennedy
Concord, CA
4. Strong similes draw attention to themselves and away from the story (two examples):
It had been a dark and stormy night, but as dawn began to light up the eastern sky, to the west the heavens suddenly cleared, unveiling a pale harvest moon that reposed gently atop the distant mesa like a pumpkin on a toilet with the lid down.
Gerald R. Johnson
Vancouver, WA
Like a baleen whale inhaling krill--a collection of small marine crustaceans of the order Euphausiacea--or an anteater sucking up Formicidae-- characteristically having wings only in the males and fertile females and living in colonies that have a complex social organization--her lips sought out mine in a passionate kiss.
Michael J. Sheehan
Cedar, MI
To fiction writers, these important lessons are like a drink of fresh water to a man lost in the desert (if it was really, really hot out there and he'd been lost for a really long time and didn't have anything to drink, maybe even for a quite a while before he got lost).
More of these valuable lessons at:
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2006.htm