The 2015 Lyttle Lytton Contest#
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The 2015 Winners
This is (eeeagh!) the fifteenth running of this contest for relatively short opening sentences to very bad imaginary novels, and with each year it gets that much harder to find territory that previous entries haven’t explored. For instance, take this year’s winner:
I drew my customized Kimber 1911 .45, with the Pachmayr grips and skeletonized trigger, and leveled it coolly at the African-Americans.
“The experiment of multiculturalism has failed,” noted Captain Perry as he removed the laser-bayonet from the brown man’s chest.
Liam Norton
The bastard mayor tossed the money to his criminals. “Heh heh heh,” everyone said.
Daniel Snyder (not the football one)
“Why do you love me?” asked Wildflower.
“I love you because you are brave, strong, beautiful, tough, kind, spunky, and pure,” said Damien, “and unlike all the others, you stood up to Dictator James.”
Will McGill
“Wildflower” just kills me. Even more flat-footed was this honorable mention:
The sky was gray, fitting for this grim dystopia.
Lachlan Redfern
Continuing with the honorable mentions, here’s one that, like the Wildflower entry, is dialogue-heavy, and this one seems to be trying to check all the boxes:
“Mom,” I asked my mom. “What’s for breakfast?”
“You know I haven’t made breakfast since your father died in a mysterious car crash a year ago on your birthday,” she said sadly. “You have his eyes.”
Akiel Surajdeen
Though she may have wiped away the tears, they just couldn’t stop flowing. Like a wound on a patient without enough platelets, it kept pouring out, rapidly filling in the paths she tried to remove.
Lucas Finney
The cattle-rustler’s whip sang through the air like a long thin snake.
Lauren McNaughton
Do you have the time
To read a little rhyme?
I can rhyme for ages,
For 400 pages!!!
Lauren McNaughton
With the brassy tocsin of his morning alarm clock, John Michaelson’s weary eyes exploded open.
Tim Gray
Night falls in East L.A. with the crimson blood of men, as the day rises with women’s tears.
Aimee L.
Here’s a similarly lachrymose entry:
David fell into Greg’s manful arms and cried against his waiting muscles.
Hannah Sim
And here is Hannah’s fourth winning entry in just the past two years:
Nothing would ever stop reminding me of Lisa and her body.
Hannah Sim
And with that, it appears that we have reached the somatic portion of this year’s contest. Or if we hadn’t after that last entry, we sure have after this one:
So we all had dicks, all of the boys—can I go on?
J. Robinson Wheeler
The dancers undressed; Liam noted their respective vulvae.
Zachary Cristina
All the girls at the school talked about makeup and boys, but Sheila wore ripped jeans and didn’t care.
Hannah & David Meyer-Lindenberg
But lest you find Sheila’s nonconformity too seductive, here are some sage words to consider:
I hope you discover, my dear teenagers, reading about my life as a “rebel”, that doing what your parents say isn’t always bad, cuz it can be bitchin’ sometimes.
Juan Hernandez
And in a similar vein:
Ten years ago in the war, the only thing in which I thought I would be was “the shit,” not this mansion where I live at now.
JJ Wright
I knew that Billy had hiked into my life on a trail of broken hearts, but I never guessed that mine too would soon be becoming a part of that trail.
Charles
They had the mettle of men, and yet they ate the biscuits of dogs.
Neil Martin
I want to conclude this section of the 2015 Lyttle Lytton contest with one last honorable mention, one that, like the winner, uses a gimmick that we’ve seen before:
Jorge was helplessly gripped by the sight before him, like cojones in the hand of an expert dominatriz.
anonymous
Like any Russian, Sokolov enjoyed a game of chess. At some level he was never not playing it!
REAMDE by Neal Stephenson
quoted by Ian Charlesworth
Serena fished the Tic Tac out and put it on her tongue, but she was so worried about her future, she could barely taste it.
Gossip Girl by Cecily von Zeigesar
quoted by Anant Pai
But this year some keen-eyed entrants found worthy contenders among works written long before the invention of the flavor explosion that is the Tic Tac. Here’s one from 1851:
“Heaven help me!” she groaned, mentally. “Now is my hour of need!”
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
quoted by Ashley Rattner
And from 1816:
When Nathaniel at last ventured distantly to hint of an engagement with Olympia, her father Professor Spalanzani smiled all over his face.
The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann (translator: John Bealby)
quoted by Nat Hendel
But let’s look at some of the entries repurposed from non-fiction. This is exactly the sort of thing the Found division was created for:
For Google executive Forrest Timothy Hayes, heroin was the killer app.
Patrick May and Heather Somerville, mercurynews.com, 2014.0725
quoted by Joey Schoblaska
I look forward to the article that begins, "For the 51 passengers who plunged to their deaths off a cliff in Peru, the luxury motor coach that carried them was indeed the struggle bus."
The family road trip in America is as old as covered wagons headed west—older, if you consider the ocean a road.
Dean Nelson, aaa.com, 2015 March/April
quoted by Daniel Koning
“Bees are good,” Obama says, as children scream.
politico.com, 2015.0406
quoted anonymously
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