Thursday, July 01, 2010

Lyttle-Lytton Contest

Many readers may have heard of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, in which people compete to write the worst opening passage of a hypothetical novel, and a new winner plus a group of runner-ups (a.k.a. dishonorable mentions) are picked each year.

Today, while twiddling my thumbs as I await the evening flight to Munich, I learned of the Lyttle-Lytton contest, an offshoot distinguished by a 33-word maximum length.

Herewith the entry I sent in today:

"Two heads are better than one," tweeted Glorbiss as he dusted off his smoking gamma blaster. Too bad he now had only one left; but then again the now-headless Zamarian now had none.

Notice the many bad elements here. Tweeting while dusting off a smoking gun, er, make that gamma blaster for the badly dated sci fi cliche. Second sentence is a bit obscure about one what (head? blaster?), uses the word "now" thrice in close succession, and clarifies that a now-headless Zamarian now has no head (if that's the referent). Also, exactly 33 words.

This is a hard contest to win, but I'm hoping I'm in play for a dishonorable mention.

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