English writer Edward George Bulwer-LyttonA while back at our Writers Guild meeting, Vicki read one of her pieces that was, as usual with her writing, filled with poetic, original and evocative phrases and metaphors. And as usual, the rest of us were awestruck by her ability to coin the perfect image from common words (I wish I’d written them down, because I can’t recall them now.) At one point, Raina noted, “In another 20 years, that will be a cliché.” That is so true. A phrase may be a cliché now, but the first few times it was fresh and so apt it ultimately became overused. Vicki’s writing is brilliant, and if a cliché evolves, it is because no one else will be able to say it better.
Clichés can evolve from bad writing, too. Bad writing, however, can have its uses, particularly in the case of Bulwer-Lytton, whose bad writing was nevertheless a foray into what was then still a new art form. Think of him as Picasso in his Blue Period on a very bad art day.
The writers’ joke about bad writing always plays on English writer Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. The first sentence of his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, set today’s standard for bad, clichéd writing:
"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."
What is now the modern novel was still a new form of writing then, and Bulwer-Lytton, for all his faults, was nevertheless a pioneer in a field that has enraptured the public since Defoe’s book Robinson Crusoe was published. No longer were fictional works confined to short pieces, or epics, or tragedies based on Greek stories. Yes, Bulwer-Lytton’s sentence was unintentionally bad to modern readers (and has anyone actually read the rest of the book in the last 160 years?), but so are a lot of other sentences. An INTENTIONALLY bad sentence, however, can be fun. For proof of that, visit http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ to read up on the annual contest for bad sentences.
By the way, the 2007 winner is from my former stomping grounds of Madison, Wisconsin. Jim Gleeson’s winning entry is:
"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."
Ya gotta love it!
Clichés can evolve from bad writing, too. Bad writing, however, can have its uses, particularly in the case of Bulwer-Lytton, whose bad writing was nevertheless a foray into what was then still a new art form. Think of him as Picasso in his Blue Period on a very bad art day.
The writers’ joke about bad writing always plays on English writer Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. The first sentence of his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford, set today’s standard for bad, clichéd writing:
"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."
What is now the modern novel was still a new form of writing then, and Bulwer-Lytton, for all his faults, was nevertheless a pioneer in a field that has enraptured the public since Defoe’s book Robinson Crusoe was published. No longer were fictional works confined to short pieces, or epics, or tragedies based on Greek stories. Yes, Bulwer-Lytton’s sentence was unintentionally bad to modern readers (and has anyone actually read the rest of the book in the last 160 years?), but so are a lot of other sentences. An INTENTIONALLY bad sentence, however, can be fun. For proof of that, visit http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ to read up on the annual contest for bad sentences.
By the way, the 2007 winner is from my former stomping grounds of Madison, Wisconsin. Jim Gleeson’s winning entry is:
"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."
Ya gotta love it!
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