Post #1024347

2026-04-03 01:54 UTC

Disappointed to hear that there will be no more Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contests. I think I was just about ready to submit my entry, which would have been as memorable as that time when Janet was getting ready to go to her friend Pat&#39;s tenth birthday party and lost her skateboard under a passing M34 bus heading west along, of course, 34th Street; as she watched the skateboard crushed beneath the wheels of the behemoth it gave her pause to consider her own mortality, allowing her to idly reminisce on how she lost last year&#39;s Spelling Bee on exactly that word, how could she have missed that last &quot;y&quot;, that was such an easy word to spell, a gift, really, like the skateboard that she&#39;d been planning to give Pat but wound up getting crushed, like dreams, under the wheels of a passing, oblivious, westbound M34 bus. https://www.npr.org/2025/08/12/nx-s1-5496491/remembering-the-bulwer-lytton-fiction-contest-a-contest-for-bad-writing #writing

Replies (4)

@lxskllr@mastodon.world 2026-04-03 02:09

@quadrivial Ya know what's embarrassing? I used this literal sentence starting a story when I was in grade school... "It was a dark and stormy night" The poster child of bad writing, and I somehow came up with it all by myself. I don't know where I would've gotten it otherwise. Every once in awhile it pops to mind, and I cringe. At least I can blame it on youth.

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@ingram@mastodon.social 2026-04-03 03:45

@quadrivial I though this was a story about Brisbane oil refineries. Bulwer Island was a BP refinery on the north side of the river mouth, and Lytton is an Ampol refinery on the south side. It looks like the names did come from Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

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@not2b@sfba.social 2026-04-04 00:25

@quadrivial The story doesn't say, but I wonder if the prospect of being overwhelmed with AI generated submissions is part of the reason the organizers decided to quit.

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@not2b@sfba.social 2026-04-04 00:27

@quadrivial Good job on your entry, by the way. Maybe we could start an unofficial #BulwerLytton contest on fedi instead.

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