Write an opening that would stop you buying a book

[BAYLOR]

In a land far, far away, both in distance and time, there once stood a house on a hill. This house was large and strong with several bold, cloud-piercing towers and was very, very old. Despite its age it stood untainted by any sign of decay and was thought to be indestructible. Until it was, utterly and completely, with everything in it. It was done in a single moment by a small person, a girl, who named herself Tanja and the next day Sylvia or Gertrude or anything else that came to mind, because she did not remember her true name. Only that she came from a land far, far away, both in distance and time.



Make your choice. Was this written by
a - comedian
b - wise guy
c - other

An admirer of Edward Bulwer Lytton ?

 

[AnRoinnUltra]

In a land far, far away, both in distance and time, there once stood a house on a hill. This house was large and strong with several bold, cloud-piercing towers and was very, very old. Despite its age it stood untainted by any sign of decay and was thought to be indestructible. Until it was, utterly and completely, with everything in it. It was done in a single moment by a small person, a girl, who named herself Tanja and the next day Sylvia or Gertrude or anything else that came to mind, because she did not remember her true name. Only that she came from a land far, far away, both in distance and time.



Make your choice. Was this written by
a - comedian
b - wise guy
c - other

c - other

Seems like a straight up story intro -and a good one to my eye. Plenty of mystery to drive the thing on. I'd keep going

 

[Elckerlyc]

An admirer of Edward Bulwer Lytton ?

Eh... No. I had to google him, to be honest. But, after I did that... Maybe?

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

The first light of dawn spilled like cheap wine across Kardashevia, greatest city in the Multiverse. It glinted through the crystal penthouses of the Helium Quarter, and painted with a warm orange glow the regimented hexagonal courtyards of the Hive districts, where the first yellow-furred gardeners were already hard at work, feeding the greatest city in the Multiverse. It heated the patchwork of tin roofs that covered Dagon Market, where human and kappa traders bustled about their business unaware of the pervasive reek of fish from everywhere in the Multiverse that surrounded them. The suburbs of Dronetown in the east, home to billions of stockbrokers and their slaves, already stood in full daylight even as the blood-drinkers of Spiketown, in the west, caroused under the setting moon. And there were places the sun did not reach. In the countless layers of the Undercity, a vast city in its own right, the sharp-toothed, crest-haired Mo'Locks were oblivious to the coming of day. The monolithic towers of the Shylords remained swaddled in their dusty cocoons of mammothspider silk. And then there was that /other/ city, that stood at right angles to Kardashevia - who knows what light shone down, or sideways, upon those appalling sentiences? Elephant-bird-drawn carriages rattled along the street in the shade of the nuclear monorail. Black smoke rose in a pall over the docks, where the Scrutineers were eliminating with extreme predjudice yet another outbreak of the Gnawing Plague. In the slums of Bogarttown, a shantytown the size of any normal city, mutated elvish children polished boots or begged for shells, huddling for warmth against the vast network of steam-pipes that linked all the reeking industries of the vastest city in the Multiverse to the vast, Hellbeast-fueled forge that lay beneath the vertiginous towers of The Spline.

That morning, in the most impossibly huge city any universe has ever known, Bobu Fokushein yawned and stretched as he peered out of the window.

[TLR: The trend was cute to start with, but nowadays any time I see an SF/Fantasy book title with the word "City" in it, my eyes glaze over. Particularly if it's coupled with "greatest" in the blurb.]

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

^....I'm very tempted to actually use this now. If the world is already a parody of third-rate Mieville knock-offs, surely even I can't get too perfectionist about stories set in it?

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

The first light of dawn spilled like cheap wine across Kardashevia, greatest city in the Multiverse. It glinted through the crystal penthouses of the Helium Quarter, and painted with a warm orange glow the regimented hexagonal courtyards of the Hive districts, where the first yellow-furred gardeners were already hard at work, feeding the greatest city in the Multiverse. It heated the patchwork of tin roofs that covered Dagon Market, where human and kappa traders bustled about their business unaware of the pervasive reek of fish from everywhere in the Multiverse that surrounded them. The suburbs of Dronetown in the east, home to billions of stockbrokers and their slaves, already stood in full daylight even as the blood-drinkers of Spiketown, in the west, caroused under the setting moon. And there were places the sun did not reach. In the countless layers of the Undercity, a vast city in its own right, the sharp-toothed, crest-haired Mo'Locks were oblivious to the coming of day. The monolithic towers of the Shylords remained swaddled in their dusty cocoons of mammothspider silk. And then there was that /other/ city, that stood at right angles to Kardashevia - who knows what light shone down, or sideways, upon those appalling sentiences? Elephant-bird-drawn carriages rattled along the street in the shade of the nuclear monorail. Black smoke rose in a pall over the docks, where the Scrutineers were eliminating with extreme predjudice yet another outbreak of the Gnawing Plague. In the slums of Bogarttown, a shantytown the size of any normal city, mutated elvish children polished boots or begged for shells, huddling for warmth against the vast network of steam-pipes that linked all the reeking industries of the vastest city in the Multiverse to the vast, Hellbeast-fueled forge that lay beneath the vertiginous towers of The Spline.

That morning, in the most impossibly huge city any universe has ever known, Bobu Fokushein yawned and stretched as he peered out of the window.

[TLR: The trend was cute to start with, but nowadays any time I see an SF/Fantasy book title with the word "City" in it, my eyes glaze over. Particularly if it's coupled with "greatest" in the blurb.]

This is a great entry. It contains crap metaphors and similes, which are a hallmark of badly written novels. "The first light of dawn spilled like cheap wine..." Uh? Such nonsense is remarkably common in very popular novels like one I just rejected after reading the preview; Nevernight by Jay Kristoff. "They'd stood entwined on the bridge of whispers, a purple blush pressing against the curves of the sky." What was a purple blush? The entwined lovers? The bridge? And why purple? And this is just the eighth sentence of the book!

 

[comradeogilvy]

Axo sharpened his broadsword on the stone sharpening wheel. His sweat glistened body... (I close the book and set it back on the shelf, but I should have known from the coverart.)

 

[AE35Unit]

Everyone dies in the end. That's what many fear to hear when reading a book in front of friends. In this case it happens to be true

 

[AE35Unit]

This is a great entry. It contains crap metaphors and similes, which are a hallmark of badly written novels. "The first light of dawn spilled like cheap wine..." Uh? Such nonsense is remarkably common in very popular novels like one I just rejected after reading the preview; Nevernight by Jay Kristoff. "They'd stood entwined on the bridge of whispers, a purple blush pressing against the curves of the sky." What was a purple blush? The entwined lovers? The bridge? And why purple? And this is just the eighth sentence of the book!

Sounds ok to me... I've read a lot worse

 

[JunkMonkey]

Another real one:

Not the first page but the blurb on the back. It was SO bad I bought the book. I remember buying it. It cost me a quid in Poundland in the Meadowhall shopping Centre in Sheffield. I don't remember reading it. I don't even remember what it is called. I do remember my daughter telling me it was terrible.

 

[chrispenycate]

Biblophile

Stop me from buying a book? Nothing except for poverty (and poverty is a variety of nothing) had managed that. Since I had absorbed the use of phonetic text. Stop me reading that particular book, occasionally Rarely would I pick up an ancient leather-clad, handwritten ledger and dive into its desiccated contents, or the private life of a footballer, but these were personal tastes, and beside, Miss Dunstant, proprietor of our local bookshop, would never offer them for me.

Doubtless, if I were reliant on a prison library I would be less exigent in my demands, perchance perusing a politicians (ghost written) biography as slightly preferable to the text on the side of a cornflakes packet, but nothing is less certain in this life. Ln a prison for me, they'd probably leave the 'mute' switch off the television.

 

[Toby Frost]

Badly-written grimdark, you say? Here is an except from When Blood Runs Freely From A Crimson Sword by Sven Takkkle, who you may know from such classic WW2 novels as On The Golden Beaches of Stalingrad and Blood And Brains In the Skies Over Braintree:


You can tell a lot about a dead man by looking at his flies.

The flies that circled around Rogus Notaspartan were plump, majestic creatures, their bodies shimmering like jewelled, violet, luxurious raisins. They glistened as much as Rogus’ empty eyes that gazed vacantly towards an empty heaven, as if to plead for the uncaring, callous gods to intervene in the endless carnage below. For in war there are always flies, endless, awful, unavoidable, purple prose flies.

For flies like dead flesh, even the flesh of men. Not many people know this. Even fewer are brave enough to say it.

“Warriors!” cried Gark Notaviking, “Blood, warriors! Blood and sh*t! sh*t and whores! Warriors and sh*t and blood and whores!”

His men roared with approval across the gore-sodden battlefield. They sat around a vast bonfire of human limbs, eating, ****ting and raping people of no importance to this story. The flames of the all-consuming fire licked at the sky like the tongues of over-friendly Labradors.

“Some fools,” Gark cried, as he threw another child on the fire, “think that medieval warfare is all flowers and kittens. But we battle-hardened warriors know the dreadful truth! To win at war you have to fight your enemies and sometimes kill them!”

Reeda the Naïve looked up from some rapey stuff. “But boss,” he said, “what about tactics, strategy and superior training?”

“Lies!” Gark interjected back. “Lies put about by cowards! In war, the scuzziest man always wins. Now, let us discuss the things that really matter. Warriors! Blood and whores! sh*t and warriors and whores and guts!”

 

[Biskit]

You can tell a lot about a dead man by looking at his flies.

Just for a moment, with the opening line, I thought I would put this on my TBR list...

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

It might be worth mentioning the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, although the opening lines competing for the annual prize are intentionally dreadful.

Home | The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

A whimsical literary competition for the worst possible opening sentences to novels never written.

www.bulwer-lytton.com

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

This one sentence is immortal art:

The flies that circled around Rogus Notaspartan were plump, majestic creatures, their bodies shimmering like jewelled, violet, luxurious raisins.

 

[ColGray]

I was dancing cheek to cheek with a linoleum tabletop when I noticed Jitterbug hadn't gotten shorter; the jukebox was skipping. I sat up, wiped the drool from my lip onto my shirt sleeve, and looked around.

I needed to take a leak that’d make a horse blush but door to the can was closed. The docs claimed it was my prostate that’d make a horse go pale. Horses don’t even have prostates, dummy, I'd said. Then they'd gone pale.

When did blushing make a face red and not pale? When you’re dealing with horses. At the track. And they see you just put down their stall mate for being mouthy with Oats and Apples—the jockeys, not the food. The horses could get mouthy with the food, just not the jockeys.

I was parked in front of six fingers of Four Roses, greasy fingerprints on a greasy glass when she walked in, brown orthopedic shoes squelching on the floor as she tracked the wet in from outside. She was the kind of blond on which you could base race theory, and get converts.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

I was dancing cheek to cheek with a linoleum tabletop when the jukebox gave out and the Jitterbug started skipping and repeating. I sat up, wiped the drool from my lip onto my filthy shirt sleeve, and looked around.

I needed to take a leak that’d make a horse blush but the Docs claimed it was my prostate that’d make a horse go pale. Horses don’t even have prostates, dummy, I’d said, and then they’d gone pale.

When did blushing make a face read and not pale? When you’re dealing with horses. At the track. And they see you just put down their stall mate for being mouthy with Oats and Apples—the jockeys, not the food. The horses could get mouthy with the food, just not the jockeys.

I was parked in front of six fingers of Four Roses, greasy fingerprints on a greasy glass when she walked in, brown orthopedic shoes squelching on the floor as she tracked the wet in from outside. She was the kind of blond on which you could base race theory, and get converts.

"Is this authentically squalid and working class enough, Editor?"
"Close, but can you say something edgy as well?"
"Fair point. I say, waiter? Waiter? Send over the Chateau de Sombrero '97 and put it on my tab."

 

[Muginns]

I'm breaking the 4th wall, but these ink-stains around me don't know that - they can't hear my thoughts, as you read my mind right now, the words stroking your eye-holes, my thoughts like floaty butter. Smooth. Creamy. Can you smell it? What can you smell? Me too. Hold on, a three-headed dragon just appeared from a wizard's pocket. Slash, stab, blah blah. It's dead. Hi, my name is Simon - let's go on an adventure.

 

[AnRoinnUltra]

Spudalon Fonsnenticate was a very fine professional pipe fitter. The best in fact. He would snonticate, vluntibate or otherwise condungle untill the conduit was in place.
He fitted cilinders in Chiura, ducting in Devilium, hose in Heliocontrom, lines in Laethe, siphone in Saturn and tubes in Taepeotho.
There is nowhere in the universe that he didn't connect a pipe to. Sorry, there is nowhere in the universe that he didn't connect a professional pipe to. But, of course, he gave it all up.
And only you and me will ever know why.
Well.
You don't know yet -but you will.

 

[Pyan]

A real one, that stopped me buying (or more realistically, borrowing from the library, as I would be about ten) the book for a couple of years:

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."