I’ve never attempted to write badly on purpose before, but I think I just found a good reason to give it a try: The $250 prize offered by the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The contest celebrates horrible writing — the more awkward, long-winded and excessively florid the better. It’s named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose infamous opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night…,” inspired the English department at San Jose State University to start an annual worst opening line contest in 1983. I’d be appalled if I found any of the winning entries at the beginning of a real novel, but, by themselves, they’re actually pretty amusing in a ridiculous sort of way. Here are a few of the winning entries from last year:

Though her beloved Roger had departed hours ago, Lila remained in their rumpled bed, daydreaming about his strong arms, soulful eyes, and how, when he first fell asleep, his snoring sounded not unlike two grizzly bears fighting over a picnic basket full of sandwiches, but as he drifted off into deeper slumber, his snoring became softer, perhaps as if the bears decided just to rock-paper-scissors for it instead. –Lili R. Lillie

The day started out as uneventfully as any other, and continued thus to midday and from there it was nothing at all to ease into an evening of numbing, undiluted monotony that survived unmarred by even the least act of momentary peculiarity-in fact, let’s skip that day altogether and start with the day after. –Jon Starr

Creeping slowly over the hill, the sun seemed to catch the small village nestled in the valley by surprise, which is a bit unusual really, as you’d think that something with a diameter of 865,000 miles and a surface temperature of 5780 degrees Kelvin, and which is more normally seen from 93,000,000 miles away, wouldn’t be able to creep anywhere, let alone catch anything by surprise. –Malcolm Booth