Ever since 1982, for more than a few years now, the world has been outraged (an increasingly common emotion these days) by a strange something called the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest.
Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton was a 19th-century novelist. In his time, he was more widely read than Charles Dickens. Also in his time, he opened one of his novels with these fateful words:
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the blah blah…”
Well, the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest is named in memory of poor Edward George. Each year, it challenges participants to channel Bulwer-Lytton and invent an “atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written.”
I found out about this bizarre contest I don’t know when. Of course, I immediately went to the BLFC website and signed up for their “(infrequent) BLFC news and updates.”
Then I forgot all about it.
But today, my patience and foresight were rewarded. Because the 2022 Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest winners are out!
Perhaps you are morbidly curious to find out the winner — I mean, the loser — of this year’s contest.
If you are, don’t worry. I will reveal the offending sentence right now so you can scoff at it.
Ready? Cue the tubas, point the Klieg lights at the center of the stage, and let’s welcome this year’s most wretched opening sentence:
“I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn’t help — I was fresh out of salami.”
So? As bad as you thought?
Worse?
Or does it seem a little contrived?
It’s not easy writing wretchedly. John Farmer, the winner of this year’s Bulwer Lytton award, did a lot of things right, or wrong, to make this sentence so bad.
Perhaps you’re sure this could never happen to you. Not in real life. Not unless you yourself were trying on purpose to write something awful.
But let me get to my mandatory marketing and copywriting takeaway. And that is, it often makes sense to stack different related promises and appeals in your copy. For example:
“It slices, it dices…it even makes Julienne fries!”
It can even make sense to stack promises that aren’t immediately related:
“The ‘pleasure trigger’ secret accidentally discovered by medical doctors that sets up more intense and more frequent orgasms for you! (It also curbs premature ejaculation! Pages 136-141.)”
But at some point, the promises you make can get so far apart that they don’t blend pleasantly any more. Instead they clash, jangle, and feud with each other.
And it happens to the best of ’em.
Like the few people in my Copy Riddles Inner Ring. They have become very very good at writing bullets. Each week, I’m impressed by their copy and sometimes a little put off — “I wish I would have written this. Could I have written this? Or are they getting better at this than I am?”
And yet, on last week’s Inner Ring call, this exact same issue of clashing, jangling, and grating promises came up. The promise of the combined 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency might seem convenient and attractive… but it’s actually atrocious.
So what to do?
The solution, if you ask me, is not to follow the “Rule of One” blindly.
After all, plenty of successful and effective copy doesn’t follow the “Rule of One.” Just look at the Ron Popeil and John Carlton copy above.
Instead, my advice is to be mindful that you can go too far.
And if you want to develop a a good ear, or eye, or nose for what too far might be, then the second best way to do that is to read good writing, and see how good writers do not cross that line.
The first best way of course is to look at really awful writing. Writing where mistakes are taken to the extreme, so they both make you laugh and so they stick in your memory.
If you want to see some of that, then check out the BLFC website, and scoff and snort at this year’s winners. Or just sign up to my email newsletter. I don’t always write atrociously. But sometimes I do, to make a point. In case you’re interested, here’s where to go.