It wasn’t a stormy night; rain was not falling in torrents, even though earlier thunder had rattled the sky, while driving the wet streets of San Jose near the University, I thought of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest* - thought up by Professor Scott Rice and sponsored by the English Department.

The inspiration for the contest was the opening run-on sentence from the novel by Paul Clifford: 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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. — Bulwer-Lytton (1830)

See what a disaster and bathroom humor did for Jim - the $250 prize. The 2007 overall winner: “Gerald began — but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them “permanently” meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash — to pee.” –Jim Gleeson

Snoopy, the Peanuts comic strip, has pawed some of his own - It was A Dark and Stormy Night, Snoopy.

See the 2007 Results

* The rules to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are childishly simple:

Each entry must consist of a single sentence but you may submit as many entries as you wish.

Sentences may be of any length BUT WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT ENTIRES NOT GO BEYOND 50 OR 60 WORDS, and entries must be “original” (as it were) and previously unpublished.

Surface mail entries should be submitted on index cards, the sentence on one side and the entrant’s name, address, and phone number on the other.

Email entries should be in the body of the message, NOT IN AN ATTACHMENT (and it would be really swell if you submitted your entries in Arial 12 font).

Entries will be judged by categories, from “general” to detective, western, science fiction, romance, and so on. There will be overall winners as well as category winners.

The official deadline is April 15 (a date that Americans associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories). The actual deadline may be as late as June 30.

The contest accepts submissions every day of the livelong year.
Wild Card Rule: Resist the temptation to work with puns like “It was a stark and dormy night.”

Finally, in keeping with the gravitas, high seriousness, and general bignitude of the contest, the grand prize winner will receive . . . a pittance.

Send your entries to:
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Department of English
San Jose State University
San Jose, CA 95192-0090, or

To inflict your BLFC entry electronically, digitally stimulate Bulwer’s nasal member (and please include your name, phone number, and addresses–Gastropoda and e-mail [Note: this data is for our contact information, not for public consumption. It is a convenience for interested media to be able to contact winners but we cannot post such information on our Web site, thanks to the cyber sociopaths who like to inflict viruses.]

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