The rules for the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest are childishly simple:
Each entry must consist of a single sentence.
Sentences may be of any length but we strongly recommend that entries not go beyond 50 or 60 words.
Entries must be “original” (as it were) and previously unpublished.
Due to the volume of submissions, if your entry is more than one sentence or is missing a name or location it won't be considered.
Our contest year runs from one summer to the next. All entries submitted by June 30th are eligible for the winners announced that August.
We post the winners in mid August, give or take a natural disaster or mild inconvenience. To receive an announcement email, sign up for our mailing list down there in the footer.
In keeping with the gravitas, high seriousness, and general bignitude of the contest, the grand prize winner will receive … a cheap certificate (and bragging rights).
Some of the winners :
She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.
Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and it was precisely this questionable choice of paving material, combined with the ongoing flight of middle-class demons from the urban center of Pandaemonium proper to more spacious brimstone-lakefront homes in its suburbs, that had produced the mess of closures, detours, and gridlock that were making Azazel’s commute this morning a living . . . well, you know.
Hungover, Bethany walked out onto the deck of her Malibu Beach beachhouse, her pimento-less olive-green eyes scouring the sand below like two Brillo pads, while a thundering blitzkrieg continued hammering within her head like demolition wrecking balls repeatedly smashing against concrete walls while accompanied by the deafening salvos of the cannons from the 1812 Overture.