Auckland writer among best of the worst

By REBECCA WALSH

An Auckland man with a sense of the ridiculous has won a worldwide contest for the worst writing imaginable.

Thirty-nine-year-old Matthew Roscoe took out the children's literature category of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - also known as the bad writing or dark and stormy night contest.

The software programmer for a publishing house was amused by the annual competition, which asks people to write bad opening sentences for imaginary novels, and decided to give it a go.

Sixteen abstract thoughts and entries later, the winner was a play on a familiar scene from the children's book The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy's house is carried away in a cyclone and lands on top of the Wicked Witch.

"Every so often you look at something and a sense of the ridiculous will hit you about it. You could easily attribute the one that won to sitting in a traffic jam out in Howick every morning," Mr Roscoe said.

The contest, in honour of 19th century British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who began his 1830 novel Paul Clifford with those well-known words: "It was a dark and stormy night", attracted three entries in its first year at San Jose University in California in 1982.

It now receives thousands of entries from around the world.

Scott Rice, Professor of English at San Jose University, who started the competition and was one of a panel of "undistinguished judges", described Mr Roscoe's winning sentence as showing real imagination.

"It takes standard criteria from the dismal workaday world we live in, applies it to the fantasy world of the story and comes up with something ridiculous."

New Zealanders have previously received "Dishonourable Mentions" in the contest.

Professor Rice said the grand prize winner - an Oakland woman with 25 years of editing experience, who also produced puzzles for news-stand magazines - received a "pittance".

"The other winners must content themselves to be the envy of their friends."

The winning sentence

Dorothy could hardly believe her ears as the uniformed Munchkin reeled off the citations: flying without a licence, flying an unregistered building, reckless flying causing injury or death, parking in an unauthorised place, double parking (vertical), failure to give way to pedestrians, failure to indicate, 2nd-degree witchslaughter, and closing her eyes she fervently prayed, "Please, I want to go home..."