(new rules for 2021 in red ) Your task is to write the beginning of an imaginary novel. Your goal is to make it hilariously bad. Note that wacky situations and intentional jokes are more suited to the beginnings of good comedic novels, not bad serious ones, and are therefore not really what this contest is about. On the flip side, significant butchering of the language (as opposed to subtle butchering) isn’t all that funny either. See the history pages linked above to get the feel for what sort of thing tends to win. You need not limit an entry to one sentence, and you can even submit multiple entries if all your entries combined fit into the 200-character limit. However, you cannot submit multiple entries separately. No matter how many entries it contains, only one submission will be accepted per entrant in a given year. Also, please note that brevity is one of the chief aims of this contest, so entries that fall well short of the limit are likely to do better than those that push up against it. Before you submit your entry, look it over: is there anything you could cut out? A lot of submissions over the years have consisted of a great ten-word sentence buried within a thirty-word entry. Your entry (or entries) may be original or may quote another source; if an entry quotes another source, you must state the source. Separate winners will be selected from among the original entries and from those that quote other sources. There are generally a lot fewer winners in the found division than the original division; this contest is not intended as a roundup of bad fanfic. It is also not a generic bad writing contest: an entry that sounds like the beginning of a bad news article (for instance), but not the beginning of a bad novel, should probably not be submitted. But sometimes people happen across published sentences that just scream to be Lyttle Lytton entries, and it would be a crime not to showcase them. A few tips: Again, one common fault with Lyttle Lytton submissions over the years has been that while a sentence may be funny, if it doesn’t sound like the first sentence of a novel, it’s not really appropriate. So please make sure that your entry actually sounds like it could be the beginning of a book.

Again, please read the pages of previous winners (linked above) to get a sense of the sort of badness this contest is looking for. Gross‐out humor tends to do poorly, not so much because it’s offensive as because it’s generally not funny. Neither is basic incompetence in spelling and grammar. Neither are puns. (But there are always exceptions…)

On the flip side, while “bad but not funny” isn’t what this contest is about, neither is “funny but not bad”. If you’ve written an entry that falls into the latter category, don’t submit it—​keep going and get it published! Entries should be submitted using the form below. You must submit your name and a working email address. If you don’t want your name published along with your entry, click the “don’t publish” box. No pseudonyms, please. I will accept entries up to but not after 2021 June 15 at noon, Pacific Time. The winning entries (or winning portions of longer entries) and any honorable mentions will be linked to this page shortly thereafter, likely within a month. Good luck!