The 2011 Lyttle Lytton Contest#
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The 2011 Winners
The red hot sun rose in the cold blue sky.
“Pfft”—he knew the silent but deadly whisper of a silenced SIG SG 550 rifle with a 650mm barrel and a 254mm rifling twisting rate.
Chloe W.
On the most basic level, it’s funny that the guy in the story can tell all that from a “pfft”, but what puts this on the medal stand is that there actually are millions of gun fetishists out there who totally get off on this kind of shit. Imagining a story written in the specs-heavy style of the letters page of Guns & Ammo would be amusing; the fact that this type of thing already constitutes a genre makes this into satire and is therefore funnier.
This is the story of how one woman overcame breast cancer by never ever losing faith in herself.
Victor Gijsbers
When my homie pulled out his gat, the first thing I said was, “That is very tight!”
Aurelio Ramos
Cowboy Bret said to Dave (another cowboy), “Now let’s rustle up these cattles.”
George Moomau
The quote could go on from here, and maybe the extra clauses would be funny too, but they’d undermine the impact of “let’s rustle up these cattles”. So, at least where this contest is concerned, that’s where you stop. Similarly here:
A wind was blowing from east to west, as if it were the sun, blowing instead of shining.
James Gilker
I passed the fledgling plastic to the checkout chick. “Cred?” she said.
Alex Moon
Zandor stood in the doorway, raking the onlooking crowd with the hot coals of his eyes.
Mark Caudill
I like this because I can totally see my ninth-grade English teacher giving it a green checkmark with a note saying “Powerful imagery!” Like a lot of the best entries, it seems like it should work: “hot coals of his eyes” seems all right, and “coals” goes with “raking”, and “raking a crowd” is, um, well, and “raking with eyes” is, oh dear…
The blood that was dripping onto the parched floor resembled a Rorschach ink-blot test, invented in 1921 by Hermann Rorschach.
Steve Adamczyk
He, from a physical stature, was short.
Katherine Leisering
Literary overexplanation:
“Caw! Caw!” went the birds as the massacres happened (the birds represent sadness).
Mike Sylvia
Actually, just to contradict myself—that’s a good example of density, because “‘Caw! Caw!’ went the birds” is also funny. And then there’s this:
He kissed Abigail sensually, as if to say “I still need you” with his lips.
Bryan Berrey
“Bring me the light of your love,” Steve purred into my ears.
anonymous
“My heart medication!” slowly remembered Dwayne, but his lateness was a stark reality.
Roger Strouse
This was the story of a brave man, a freeman, who can’t stop touching society.
Tadashi Narumi
That one has the added bonus of seeming like it’s trying to be a shitty Ayn Rand knockoff. Whereas I’m not sure quite what to make of the politics here:
“AAHHH” she screamed in horror as her infant rocketed from inside her towards the free world.
Ryan Hix
“Me, I like a girl with a couple extra pounds on her,” said Tom, subtly negging his target.
Mark Whitrock
I think this one works because of a register shift—“subtly” and “negging” make for an odd pairing.
The spice filled up my taste buds, and was quite lovely.
James Oliver
The phrase “filled up my taste buds” is amusingly wrong, but the daintiness of “quite lovely” is also worth a chuckle.
Mongoose-to-cobra, two serpentine forms, he was my rival; are we fighting in these holes, or are we really making love?
Susie Thai
Princess Amabel brushed her silky golden hair and tried not to think about my breasts.
Hannah Sim
The detective could smell the murder on the knife.
Jordan Brown
“NOOOOOOOOOON!” cried Poirot Jr., falling to his knees and rending his fledgling moustaches, “But when will ze killings end?!”
Rich McDowell
“You just may be the most beautiful perp I’ve ever laid sensors on,” thought the robot lieutenant as his humanoid partner ate donuts unaware.
Will Nicholes
This story is about a man and a woman, with lots of things sticking into things.
Ethan Owens
Historical epic:
He lived in a time of stories told by many.
Dan Philips
Teen drama:
Her “parents”, her “boyfriends”—Angel knew she’d never be truly understood by anyone.
Rita Mathis
The scare quotes make that one. Maybe what Angel really needs is a mentor who can connect with modern youth—perhaps this narrator:
Let’s rap about the issues of today.
Jonas Sjöqvist
And to close out this category:
No matter how hard life got, Zade thought, ska would always be there.
Brice Reynolds
As I stood there, looking at the ground, I thought to myself, “Was it all worth it?”, but then my train of thought was interrupted by a small, yet angry, cobra.
Ben Thomas
Then she died sobbing. Except platinum-level members at my website can download an awesome premium ending that has sex instead.
Nick Mathewson
These are both a little gimmicky, but still cute. But the next one is a tour de force. As noted, it’s not original to the person who submitted it, and is in fact a piece of deliberate comedy—i.e., someone did a parody of a bad writer, and someone else forwarded it to me:
Slowly, carefully, and with a lot of understanding, he put his mouth onto her mouth.
Chris Onstad, Achewood, 2009.0630
quoted anonymously
While they had been together after being married, exalting in their love, something had been outside the door, exalting in death.
The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind
quoted by Brian Click
The intruder attempted to break down the reinforced door with his axe, shouting phrases like “We will get our revenge!”, “Revenge!” and “Blood!”
Wikipedia entry on Kurt Westergaard
quoted by Asher Stuhlman
After the firestorm, Sally Quinn entered the concrete meditation labyrinth her husband had built for her on their country estate in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, to think.
Evgenia Peretz, Vanity Fair, 2010.07
quoted anonymously
As if Sally Quinn weren’t already America’s answer to Marie Antoinette.
The heating was down, all the toilets closed and there was no way to get something hot to drink.
Reuters, 2010.1217
quoted by Christos Dimitrakakis
This is actually a quote by a woman who declined to give her name to the Reuters reporter, possibly due to what that sequence tells us about her choice of beverages.
Like a present that suddenly arrived, we come into this world. We come into this world in miniature.
NBC, Today
quoted by Rachel Spitler
Several billion years ago, that whirling speck of dust known as the Earth, fifth in size among the planets, came into being.
David Kennedy et al., The American Pageant
quoted by Colin Whisler
Taken out of context and imagined as the beginning of a novel, sure, that’s amusingly bad enough to be worth an honorable mention… but as Colin notes: “Keep in mind that this is an American history textbook.” Aie. Then there’s this:
Her cheeks were rosy and so was my love—bursting with fragrance and softness.
Kaplan’s guide to the AP English test
quoted by Jared Wheeler
“Shame on you,” he scorns at you in anger, “Shame!”
“arachnobot”
quoted anonymously
And finally, we have a sentence that doesn’t work at all as the beginning of a novel, nor really as the end of one, but which was submitted by so many different people that I guess I have to post it if only so that I won’t receive it another dozen times next year:
“Wow,” said David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the work.
Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 2010.1110
quoted by a whole bunch of people
And that wraps it up for the 2011 Lyttle Lytton Contest. I guess this whole Internet thing is really taking off, because the number of entries this contest gets in a given year continues to balloon—meaning that there are also more entries every year that, on a different day, might well have made it onto the list. So if you were disappointed not to have your entry included, please try again, and never ever lose faith in yourself.
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