The 2017 Lyttle Lytton Contest#
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The 2017 Winners
In the seventeen years that the Lyttle Lytton Contest has run, there have been years when the winning entry was obvious and years when there have been a number of strong contenders, but I can’t recall a year like this, when I received no fewer than six entries that fully deserved to win. So let’s get to them! While normally I start with the winner, I think that this year I’ll build up to it a bit and present the other finalists first, beginning with this one:
“Climate change is real,” squawked the lady scientist to an auditorium crammed full of human sheep who didn’t question a word she said. “And I can ‘prove’ it.”
The millennial squirmed, but there was no entitling her way out of the firm grip of reason.
Gunnar Þór Magnússon
The Objectivist wing checks in. Man, remember when everyone was freaked out that the U.S. had gone so far off the rails that Rand Paul might be elected president?
Tanner was triggered once again, but a microaggression wouldn’t stop him this time.
Mark Hemmert
It was autumn, and the last leaf of liberty had fallen from the tree of tyranny onto the dirt of destruction.
Eric Fegan
This is the story of how I found my Father in Heaven, but it begins with my mommy, lying back as the cruel forceps tore apart my still forming yet passionately beating human heart.
Aimee Lim
Tagg could scarce believe his young eyes as they met the feast laid out richly before him: all manner of mealbreads, ripest canteloons, and—by the Star!—an entire bandersnort, carved and dripping.
Aidan Lockett
As you’ve seen, some of these entries prompt me to spend multiple paragraphs blathering on about what I liked about them. For the entry above, one word will suffice: “mealbreads”.
Dudley was a magician (not a wizard like in those Harry Potter books, and also he didn’t have a wand like in them), who was poor.
Shaked Koplewitz
Neera was a born disruptor, ready to take things and make them 2.0.
Kevin Sands
Thornmill Greyeyes was a proud elf. His ears stood proud, his cock stood proud, but most of all his heart stood proud as he watched his bride mince down the isle with her ravishingly good looks.
Lilly Bolton
Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful princess named Annabelle. She had lovely golden locks and sensuous blue eyes—a sparkling Aryan jewel, just like you! :)
Davian Aw
I guess we’re not too far away from the days when e‐readers will be able to do iris scans and bar you from reading about Annabelle if you are judged insufficiently “sparkling”.
The mists ran like dew over her green-eyed scarlet locks.
J.R. Pascucci
I liked this one because “green‐eyed scarlet locks” is an egregious but completely believable error. I have read very little fanfic but even I have encountered fanfic with very similar mistakes.
His tired blue-eyed gaze hit the lanky blonde and then turned to the brunette.
Aiva Sile
Points for “blue‐eyed gaze” and for the misuse of “hit”, but the main thing that landed this entry among the winners was this: a moment ago I mentioned fanfic, but even a lot of professional writing is overeager to establish the color of each character’s hair and eyes, and will often even reduce characters (female characters in particular) to their hair color. It’s not hard to see why so many authors jump to announce each character’s hair and eye color as early as possible, at least in the 20% of the world where those things vary. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but you can take a thousand pages and it’s still pretty unlikely that you’ll be able to convey a mental image of a character’s face much better than a police sketch. But you can at least get those driver’s license stats in, and that’s enough to distinguish between different characters’ appearances at least as well as comic book artists other than George Perez. Here are some Found entries along the same lines:
These liberated chestnut curls framed a handsome face made twice as radiant by the mysteries surely waiting just behind those light green eyes.
The Overton Window by Glenn Beck
quoted by Austin Stith
This doesn’t quite work as the first line of a novel. I mean, obviously it doesn’t work at all, but normally that’s a good thing for this contest. But without the reference to “these” curls, suggesting that we’re in the middle of a paragraph, this could have been the Found division winner, because while the eyes may be green, the prose is distinctly purple.
I slanted my eyes down to meet her big brown ones, which were slanted up.
Poison à la Carte by Rex Stout
quoted by Hillel Wayne
The new client’s titties could make a grown man cry a river, and Detective Johnson was in his own personal Pacific Ocean of sexy.
Juliana Crask
This is impressively awful from start to finish, but what makes it particularly painful is its reference to a character’s “titties”, one of the worst words in the English language. (Note to 2018 entrants: please do not send me hundreds of entries featuring the word “titties”.)
“I’ve got a feline these cats didn’t know what they unleashed when they picked a bone with me,” snarled Rex Steele, chief dogtective of the Paws Angeles Petlice Department. “This time, it’s fursonal.”
Luke Fowler
The frightening thing is that I once had a gig working on a movie adaptation of a book that was very much like this. That job paid well enough that I still have some of the proceeds stashed away, but the word “dogtective” is giving me flashbacks that are nasty enough that some of that money may have to go towards therapy.
Hashtags of the murder were all over my newsfeed.
Klaus Virtanen
One of the most popular entries in this contest’s early days was 2004’s “I know who the murderer is, Kevin blogged.” But blogging is so 2004! Klaus’s entry gets us caught up to… well, to 2007, at least. Neera gives Klaus a thumbs-up.
“Yeah,” I said as he asked if my beautiful wife got murdered yesterday (she did).
Alan Gordon
He must have seen that hashtag trending.
Simon has been friends with Darkness for a long time, like in the song “The Sound of Silence” by the protagonist’s namesake & Garfunkel.
Bjorn Edstrom
This is my coming-of-age story. Not literally, like the movie “Big”, starring Tom Hanks, or the movie “13 Going On 30”, starring Jennifer Garner, although those are both good movies.
Kyle Boyd
1. YOU, the Anagramancer, stare down the invading MANTICORE: Will you ROMANCE IT (turn to 123), give it CREMATION (turn to 213), or summon EROTIC MAN (turn to 312)?
Stephen Wort
His steel-corded muscles pressed into her body, so close there was scarcely room to breathe beneath the pillowy swell of her breasts.
Alexis Feynman
That may not be a Pacific Ocean of sexy, but surely it’s at least a Quabbin Reservoir or something.
The hot Florida sun battered my recently bruised shoulders that were a part of the activities where my virginity was lost.
Tammy Green
Beautifully awkward. The deflowering‐related program activities are sensational, but let’s not overlook the extra little touch Tammy adds with the word “where”.
“The time was now and the location was here; I’m ready,” thought nubile, 18-year-old Jenny as she lay fertilely on Johnny’s bed, blithely unready for the future.
Craig Handy
Judging from the tense of the first two verbs in her thought bubble, Jenny wasn’t ready for the present either!
Normally Frank was as happy as the next guy to have an erection, meaning very happy, but this was ridiculous.
Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson
quoted by Juan Hernandez
It isn’t the over-explanation of “meaning very happy” that landed this entry a spot on the winners’ page—that’s pretty clearly a deliberate joke. What makes this a Lyttle Lytton sentence is that the joke suggests that KSR is oddly unfamiliar with how male sexuality works. Like, the mere fact of having an erection doesn’t generally make the next guy very happy, unless he’s getting over a bout of impotence or something. Often erections are inconvenient—there are longstanding clichés about how they make it difficult to urinate in the morning and about how they embarrass middle-school boys who sit near pretty girls in math class. Sparks wrote a whole song about the angst they can produce. I’m going to stop talking about erections now.
I first laid eyes on her at a mutual friend’s wedding. Her body shone through her dress; it wasn’t unbecoming, but you could see enough.
Maxwell B.
You know the old joke about how a millihelen is the unit of beauty necessary to launch one ship? I was going to make a joke about a milli‐[something] being the ability to see 0.1% of the way through a dress, and then tried to think of someone famous for wearing a see-through dress to fill in the “[something]”, and the name I came up with was Rose McGowan. That is how current my pop culture knowledge is. I am old.
She wanted to be loved like most women do, but was mostly ignored like the Alpini in the 12th Isonzo-Battle.
Dominikus Plaschg
Yep, we’ve reached the bad simile portion of the contest! Look out, here comes another:
“I’m breaking up with you”—her words shot into my heart, like bullets from the gun that her mouth was like.
Jake Scott
Your heart will have a hard time standing proud after that!
Her wit was sharp like a lawnmower blade—it could cut you down to size (which she could adjust, like a lawnmower).
anonymous
Will you cut your foe down to size like a LAWNMOWER BLADE (turn to 456), summon an ABLER LEWD WOMAN to do it for you (turn to 546), or dispense with wit and instead BELLOW NEW DRAMA (turn to 645)?
“Oh no,” Alex gasped when realization crashed over her like the ocean wave soon to be killing her.
Sarah Tizzard
This translator isn’t taking any liberties with the original Latin, is she?
Like the Jews, the corals of the Great Barrier Reef observe a lunar calendar.
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
quoted by George Menz
“Ah, little Abu,” sighed wisely the Master as his eyes roved the desert sands. “When will it be that the Muslim, the Christian, and the Jew learn to listen together to the sound of the wind?”
Benjamin Smith
Just as the equine bott fly invades its host equus to inject its larvae, Ted’s glowing aura now infected Mary’s every thought.
Erin Davis
Still probably a more advisable way to start a sentence than “Like the Jews”.
“I only wish He would understand me like you do,” Rebecca sighed, twirling her fingers not only through her auburn hair but also the horse’s.
anonymous
There she was, staring at the sunset, wondering why it was blue… then she remembered she was staring at it through the sad filter of her tears.
anonymous
Almo gripped the hysteric female. “Tranquilize yourself!”
Peter Sonnburg
These were obviously meant as the beginnings of two separate imaginary novels, but they do kind of work together, don’t they? In any case, the misogyny of Peter’s imaginary author to the contrary, even the most macho of men are not immune to heartbreak:
The newly single Macho Man certainly wasn’t ready for the pain caused when Miss Elizabeth hit him with an elbow from the emotional top ropes.
Katelyn Lammie
The rain was pouring, but I cried harder, my tears sweeping away into the gutter where I belonged.
Tristan Hill
After all that crying, it’s important to stay hydrated:
Susan drank water, the liquid of life, unaware that soon death would be hers.
A.R. Van Rhyn
I love “the liquid of life”—that whole sentence is so hokey and yet so very believable.
The day began like any other. My alarm clock rang at 6:51 a.m. and James Brown told me that he felt good—he knew that he would. If only I myself had known that later, I would not feel good.
Brett
I find it hard to imagine feeling worse than when the alarm clock goes off.
“So the ‘establishment’ likes opera, huh?” I thought to myself. That’s when I had the epiphany that started it all. “Well, let's see how they handle a rock opera!”
anonymous
G0bl1n always told me: “You can’t speedrun life, Ph4z0r; not even tool-assisted.”
Dawson Smith
So let’s conclude by wrapping up the Found division!
It was too peaceful out here, surrounded by the vacuum of space and with only the continual hum of the twin ion drives breaking the silence.
Wild Space: Star Wars Legends (The Clone Wars)
quoted by Marck Dorvil
In the first edition of this page I had a joke here, but I’ve noticed that a number of people have objected that this sentence is fine because someone inside a spaceship would be able to hear the hum of the engines. The point I was trying to make obliquely, and will now instead make straightforwardly, is that that doesn’t matter, due to the way the brain (yes, yes, #notallbrains) processes information. Let’s walk through the sentence. “It was too peaceful out here”—okay, why?, we wonder. What made it so peaceful? The next phrase seems to provide the answer: “surrounded by the vacuum of space”—oh, aha! What do we know about the vacuum of space? You can’t breathe, liquids boil away… and, of course, there’s no sound. “In space no one can hear you scream” and all that. The fact that the first phrase emphasized the “peace” (automatic association: “and quiet”) of the surroundings out here really hammers home the point: silent because of vacuum, silent because of vacuum. So when we reach the end of the sentence—“breaking the silence”, the obvious referent is the silence of the vacuum of space. Yes, a moment later we realize that doesn’t make sense and look for another referent, and discover that, okay, it could be the silence within the spaceship, i.e., the spaceship which hasn’t been mentioned and whose existence we can only gather by inference. But that’s too late. Our brains have already gone “buh?”. Writers have to make sure that their prose works associatively as well as logically, because the brain is not a very logical bone and all the online commenters in the world saying “Actually!” will not prevent readers from stumbling.
She turned to her side and watched the people nearest to her, starting the process of listening.
anonymous entrant quoting a friend’s story
I initially had this flagged as an honorable mention in the Original category—there have been several years when I’ve grouped together all the entries based around awkward phrasings and I figured this entry would be the centerpiece of that group. It was only when I started to put the winners page together that I looked more closely and discovered that this was a Found entry. And it’s this sort of thing that makes me wonder whether I put more of a premium on plausibility than I should. Like, “Susan drank water, the liquid of life” got major bonus points from me because it was so funny and yet I could totally imagine a real author writing that line and thinking it was good stuff. I would not have said the same about “starting the process of listening”—I’d have argued that it stretches credibility a wee bit too far. And yet!
Some time before the Mega-Quake of ’26 erased Neo-Tokyo from the Matrix, the first unsuspecting CEO was sitting in his New Nippon garden enjoying his ’trodes when he was downloaded by the enemy.
Rim by Alexander Besher
quoted by Kaitlin Mac Donald
When settlers first came to the shores of North America, they found several things. They found a land inhabited by an exotic people that was rich in resources and in wolves.
Managing Our Natural Resources
quoted anonymously
That concludes the contest for 2017! If you enjoy the Lyttle Lytton Contest, please consider supporting it by tossing a few cents at my Patreon account, the proceeds from which allow me to devote time to this and other projects. One recent project was publishing a new, rewritten ebook edition of my novel Ready, Okay!, so if you’re at all curious about what I get up to when I’m not curating Lyttle Lytton entries, check it out. And with the plugs out of the way—many thanks to all the entrants, as well as to the posters, rebloggers, and retweeters who help to spread the word about this contest. My deep appreciation for all of your contributions to this contest over the years is real. And I can “prove” it!
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