The 2014 Lyttle Lytton Contest #

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The 2014 Winners

Her spirit was as strong as the titanium sheathing her graphene-coral bones.

That said, the Found division was not created as an exercise in pointing and laughing at bad fiction. It was supposed to be for taking lines from things like advertisements and news articles and showing how funny they would be if reimagined as the first lines of novels. Consider this:

Drug lord Pablo Escobar’s hippo died the same way he did, hunted down and shot by the authorities for posing a danger to the public.

thestar.com, 2009.0711
quoted by Glen Chiacchieri

That isn’t too far off from the beginning of One Hundred Years of Solitude! Or if the cadences of Anna Karenina are more your speed, here’s a line from a medical journal:

Birth defects affect us all, but particularly families with children who have birth defects.

nih.gov, 2013.0807
quoted by Rowan Jacobs

This, on the other hand, cuts a little too close to some of my own work (and life):

I’ve fallen prey to the vicissitudes of limerence periodically since I felt the first pangs of adolescence.

deleted review of Meat Is Murder on rateyourmusic.com
quoted by Jonathan Hill

Yet the fact remains that most people who submit entries for the Found division of the contest pick their lines from works of fiction. And I must confess that some do strike me as meriting inclusion. Here’s one that caught my eye:

Suddenly Alex had had enough. “Then why don’t you go and ---- yourself.” He spat out the swear word.

Scorpia Rising by Anthony Horowitz
quoted by Alex Huntington

It was that time again. The time where all the horses used to show off to their gods.

hylianwolflink.deviantart.com, 2013.0726
quoted by Aaron McGinniss

That concludes the honorable mentions in this category. The winner of the Found division for 2014 is one that got passed around the Internet for a bit around this time last year and so may be old news to some; one that is taken from a piece of fan fiction, so kind of an easy target; one that doesn’t actually work all that well as the beginning of a novel, and so has no real right to win this award; and yet in so many ways reads like the ultimate Lyttle Lytton entry:

Obama chuckled. “You mean the Chaos Emeralds?”

@fanfiction_txt on Twitter, 2013.0430
quoted by Sid Delano

“Together, we will beat them all,” she whispered, caressing the circlet-girt fontanelles of her #royalbaby.

Alex Thorpe

As we gazed into each other’s eyes, Colin moved the front bits of my hair off my face and put them with my other hair.

Hannah Sim

That one has a bit of an Achewood feel to it.

As the abandoned temple crumbled, Professor Winston cried, “Utilize your rope!”

Ari Brill

All humans work at The Factory, which is run by robots and it makes more robots.

Harold S. Grimbly

It’s obvious how the effectiveness of the first of these hinges on the word “utilize”, but I would submit that the second works in large part because of the “it”.

It was 1995 the year the soccer teams came, kicking their balls, to town.

Gage Herrmann

I know that there’s a double entendre in there, and the beginning is nicely awkward and the tone is humorously inappropriate, but above all that, I’m just amused by the mental image.

“Well, this is passing strange,” thought Shakespeare as he saw the dead body of the lady in Stratford-upon-Avon, “and methinks it dost bear investigating.”

Stephen Strepsi

“This sure is a bad murder,” quietly thought Detective Gaius Hanssen as he was investigating a hell of a crime at the Colosseum in Ancient Rome.

Kevin Sands

“The Crime Lads have done it again,” I realized grimly, surveying my dead wife.

Hannah Sim

As he stared into her fiery alabaster eyes, the wealthy Earl Roderick realized that Lady Serena was not like the other Regency-era noblewomen he had known.

Kristen Ahrens

I gently began to fuck Tracey, and as the fucking continued we swept down and across the floor like midnight dancers.

Jake Scott

Darla lay aside her man, yowling cat noises in the glow of their grownup lovedance.

Jacq

Their passionate love took flight as an explosion of sprawling limbs and content genitalia.

Felix Zhou

Sadly, most romances eventually end in heartbreak:

I couldn’t believe what I heard as I read the words in her note which, like daggers, sliced up all my feels.

JJ Wright

Phil’s tears fell softly, carried down his face by the gravity of her unfairness.

Piper Gragg

This next one falls into the same category, but it also serves as the winner of a mini-contest that it seems like y’all were having without me: what was up with half the entries this year being about vampires? Aren’t we supposed to have moved on to dystopian teenagers killing each other or something?

No one could love a dark-past’d vampire like me.

Lachlan Redfern

Nils awoke, contemplating the things of love.

Peter Berman

On a similar theme:

Dave, sitting there, thought to himself quietly about all the different things in the world.

Zachary Segel

The man with black skin took the big rubber ball and jumped and put it into the basket with a metal rim on a board.

Josh Chen

Foreword by Donald Sterling.

“No!” raged the swimmer, his opponent streaking by to touch the wall like a dolphin, “No.”

Kinley Gibson

Ah, the first time I set eyes on Asia… a whole new world of rich descriptions and evocative atmospheres was unveiled before my eyes.

Chetan Desai

New York in the 80s: money was tight, but homies were tighter.

Jonas Sjöqvist

The mean loudmouths at Orangedale High just didn’t understand Timmy, who only wanted to stay quiet and read and appreciate nature.

Will McGill

“Appreciate nature” is an especially nice touch there. Then we have the misapplication of verbs to bodily organs:

Stepping into the trinket shop, the musty air inhaled by Glenda’s lungs went unnoticed, distracted by the air of wonder inhaled by her eyes.

Joe Smith

Dark. Cold. Vast. Shards, falling. Shapelessness. Formlessness. A wheeling, as of stars. Yes: you are inside my cerebral cortex, suckling on my thoughts.

Sam Horwood

Like this year’s winner, the entry below plays off a popular web site:

Welcome to WikiPlot, the free novel that anyone can edit! LOL JOHN LIKED POO

Nick Mathewson

I like this next one a lot—it does hit that sweet spot of “Sigh, I actually did write sentences like this when I was fourteen or so and thought they were pretty good”:

The rain loudly hits the sidewalk like bacon sizzles in a skillet, thinks Jake as he holds his coat collar closed, wishing he could trade the bitter cold for that meaty heat.

Greg Jensen

And to conclude this year’s list of Lyttle Lytton winners, here’s one that pretty much broke the needle off my WTF meter.

Casie did not enjoy the preference dreams, like lemon – red pepper – onion; she much preferred the simple dreams, like orange – orange.

The 2014 Lyttle Lytton Contest#

The 2014 Lyttle Lytton Contest #