As any copyright lawyer worth her salt will tell you, it’s nearly impossible to own a copyright to a single sentence, title or slogan. Too bad for Bulwer-Lytton writing contestants. Inspired by the writings of the author of the famous, overly wordy opening sentence which began, “It was a dark and stormy night…,” these contestants compete to write the “worst,” wordy first sentence of fictitious fiction. See www.bulwer-lytton.com
I said “too bad.” These one-sentence wonders are simply too short to gain legal protection, in a long-winded sort of way. But put to the test to create a protectable work, we LGP attorneys could fix that. See for yourself. We added transitional language in italics to the winning entries of various categories and combined them into a single story, with the categories noted in parentheses. Observe:
Towards the dragon’s lair the fellowship marched – a noble human prince, a fair elf, a surly dwarf and a disheveled copyright attorney who was frantically trying to find a way to differentiate this story from “Lord of the Rings.” (Fantasy) But that was not important right now. As he crossed the Nebbish Desert, lawyer Trevor Earp had greater problems than fire-breathing creatures and looming infringement claims. The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor – the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn’t use more than twice, but you do; but Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride. (Animals)
For his own part, the surly dwarf – affectionately known as “Windy Indy” for his frequent flatulence -- ruminated on the unfairness of it all, facing up to his own special quest. How best to pluck the exquisite Toothpick of Ramses from between a pair of acrimonious vipers before the demonic Guards of Nicobar returned should have held Indy’s full attention, but in the back of his mind he still wondered why all the others who had agreed to take part in his wife’s holiday scavenger hunt had been assigned to find stuff like a Phillips screwdriver or blue masking tape. (Adventure)
Admired in her own land as the fairest of them all, the elf made no such impression on the rest of the fellowship, and she in turn made no secret of her attitude toward the “noble” prince, Gillame. Fleur looked down her nose at Gilliame, something she was accomplished at, being six foot three in her stocking feet, and having one of those long French noses, not pert like Brigitte Bardot’s but more like the one that Charles De Gaulle had when he was still alive and President of France and he wore that cap that was shaped like a little hatbox with a bill in the front to offset his nose, but it didn’t work. (Only the French)
At last the fellowship found the circus, set up near the hamlet closest to the dragon’s land. Upon entering the Big Tent, they espied a graceful woman in the center ring, walking on giant stilts. She walked in on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida – the pink ones, not the white ones – except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn’t wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t. (Detective)
But – though they never found Drover there – the four agreed they witnessed a show which would never be equaled. The highlight was Buster the flying baboon. “Buster,” it turned out, was aptly named. In a flurry of flame and fur, fangs and wicker, thus ended the world’s first and only hot air baboon ride. (Adventure) Absorbing all he had just experienced, Trevor murmured, “They should’ve used a prairie dog.”
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