Anecdote Monday: Deliberately Terrible Bad First Paragraphs of Novels

Getting the performance rating of highly successful, although clearly nothing to be ashamed of, left Blevins somewhat oddly dissatisfied, like when you realize, upon having the triage nurses greet your ambulance, that your underwear, as far as you can determine, is in pretty decent condition, but you’ll, nonetheless, never pull through the surgery.

Jim Lubell
Mechanicsville, Maryland


The goose waddled slowly, heavily, across the road, exactly the way my mother-in-law would if she were a goose.

Mary Montiel
Wichita, KS


A Lodgepole Pine grew straight and tall in front of his cabin, sort of like a lodgepole, only with branches.

Stephen E. Moore
Edmonds, WA


Withdrawing his hand from her knee, the English professor stormed, “Ending a sentence with a preposition is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put,” although she had merely looked at his hand and asked, “What are you doing that for?” in a sentence intended to end the proposition.

Carl C. Partlow
Rancho Cucamonga


Yet again Imelda was exacerbated, or at least she assumed she was, as she was never sure exactly what the term meant though when she felt bloated and crampy as she was now, she was pretty sure she was, exacerbated that is.

Matt Fidiam
Soquel, CA


The day was like any other, except that this was a Wednesday so it was really only like 1/7th of the other days.

Randy Wilson
New Albany, IN


Maybe it was because he was feeling dizzy after the four litres of crème de menthe he’d drunk, or perhaps it was because the day had started with his slippers exploding completely unexpectedly as he ate his cornflakes, but, as Anthony looked behind him for the fortieth time, walking home from the bar, he could have sworn he was being followed by a large silver-backed gorilla.

Terrë Yuki
London


Gripping the handle of the knife carefully, Vanessa made a nervous incision in the body on the table, wondering vaguely if she was anywhere near the heart as the surgeon, her work-experience supervisor, flicked vaguely through the latest “Who magazine” that was placed over the head of the patient, and in taking a deep drag of her filtered 16-milligram noticed that, if the Oscars were anything to go by, orange was back in again.

Beth Worrall
Australia


Her eyelashes fluttered like the windshield wipers of an eighteen-wheeler on the Ohio Turnpike when the weary-eyed driver is trying to have at least some vision in a heavy August rainstorm that is like an Appaloosa urinating on solid asphalt.

Paul Bailie
Chicago, IL


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