Bad Writing Hall of Shame 2019!

19th century novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote so badly that San José University started an annual contest to see who could write opening sentences even worse than his. This year, the Overlake School Library ran its annual bad writing (and bad poetry) contest again. The results made many of hapless faculty, who had to vote on the worst of the worst, reconsider their life choices! Out of almost 200 entries, here are the winners for 2019-2020, plus the winner in our new category—the “Accidentally great” sentence!

First Place

The sunlight hit her eyes, like a slap to the eyeballs that was warm.   --Mary, 7th                                                      

Second Place Tie

I was listening to Mary Had a Little Lamb and I wondered, did she eat the lamb?   --Siyona, 7th

Let’s charge right into this electric book about the sparky facts that you don’t yet know about lightning.  --Sonja, 8th

Third Place

So as you already know, Jared has food poisoning from eating too much mayonnaise to get into Harvard. --Elizabeth G., 8th

Accidentally Great Sentence Winner

At that moment, I knew that my cause of death would be nursery rhymes. --Mufan, 7th

Image from Flickr by Katexic, (image link) used under a Creative Commons license