It Was a Long and Convoluted Sentence

You’ve probably seen the line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” I’ve seen it here and there, in various places, including in Peanuts comic strips as a line typed by Snoopy sitting on his doghouse. It’s often cited as “the worst line in literature.” In fact, there’s an annual contest, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, that has people write similarly “bad” lines.

For years, I never understood why “It was a dark and stormy night” was a bad line. It read fine to me. Sometimes, the concept made me wonder about my own writing style; if I thought that line was fine, how bad were my own lines that I also thought were fine.

But then, just a couple years ago, I learned the whole of the line:

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.

It’s the opening sentence to the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Seeing the whole line, I can understand the reason it’s considered bad, and the reason it’s always shortened to just, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Ironically, though, the shortened version is a great line, in my opinion. It’s concise and evocative.

But anyway. . .

We recently picked up a children’s book from the library, titled, Winnie the Pooh’s Halloween, by Bruce Talkington. I tried reading it to our 3 year old a couple nights ago, and found it very Bulwer-Lytton-ish.

Here’s the first line of the book:

The late afternoon sun appeared to hesitate on the horizon, setting comfortably among the tip-top branches of the trees of the Hundred-Acre Wood as if reluctant to turn off its light and make way for the night.

First line of the second page:

“Perhaps it’s afraid of the dark,” suggested Piglet, who was much fonder of the sun’s arriving and spending the day than he was of its going to bed and leaving animals to bump around in the dark and bruise their very small shins and noses and upset their delicate nerves.

This is a children’s book—something parents read aloud to their children. By the time I finished reading aloud that first line, my mouth was tired. These are bad lines for an adult book, but they rise to the amazingly bad for a children’s book.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com