The Competition is Over and the Congratulations are in Order

Hello everyone!

Now I just know that you are all dying to know who won my inaugural Worst First Line competition... but before I get to those meaty details, may I first be allowed to offer my heartiest congratulations and felicitations to each entrant and each entry. I had such a hard job and a whole lot of fun deciding the winner.

I had entries on such a wide range of subjects - from politics to bananas to hobbits to high mountains to eyes shining like candlesticks! You all did such a great job and I can't wait for the next competition.

After I weeded out the entries I didn't like quite so much, I had such a hard time tossing up between my four favourite entries. So here we have my four favourites - beginning with fourth place, and culminating with the overall winner of the entire competition.

Fourth place goes to this wonderfully awful entry:

"It all began with a torrential flood of diarrhea." 

I think you'll all agree with me that is truly a really bad first line. Congratulations to the author, Michael. 

Third place goes to this even awfuller entry:

"I was hitting the backspace key deliberately when the alarm clock rang--and only then did I realize it was only a dream."

Full of cliches, and some terrible backspacing. Congratulations to the author, Esther.

Second place goes to this terrifically terrible entry:

"Just a warning before you go on with this story, I don't think you'll enjoy going on with it, you probably shouldn't go on with this story, it might be better if you don't go on with it, and going on with it probably won't be good, and so I don't advise you to go on with it."

I mean, who starts a story like this? A truly awful first line. Congratulations to the author, Matthew.

And now, for the winner of the Bonnie's Blessings Worst First Line competition 2014 - drumroll please!

First place goes to this truly magnificently hideously atrociously atrocious entry:

"It was a dark and stormy night, like the ones Snoopy always writes about in the Peanuts cartoon, but this one was even darker and stormier than that, so that Horace Stubbleton entertained the thought that if he opened his mouth the precipitation might be enough to drown him, and he wouldn't have to suffer the ordeal awaiting him in the ornate Georgian mansion with anachronistic modern gables towards which he was picking his way through sodden bushes."

I chose this entry because I loved the awful name of the character. I loved the dark and stormy night bit. I loved the awful adjectives sprinkled liberally everywhere (I mean, anachronistic? Seriously?!?). I loved how long the sentence is and how much you just want to put a stop to it. In short, a magnificent entry. A massive round of applause and a huge amount of congratulations to the author, Michael. (This is actually a different entrant than the entrant who won fourth place, just in case you were wondering. The just happen to have the same name.)