The Family Treethyme: Really, Bad, Awful, Terrible Writing

ROMANCE UNIVERSITY'S FIRST ANNUAL TAINTED LOVE CONTEST

Whether it’s a bouquet of well-intentioned, half-dead flowers from the corner liquor store, the stale box of drugstore candy with someone else’s name on it, or the Valentine that never came, everyone’s got a love-gone-wrong story.

As the world prepares to celebrate Valentine’s Day, RU is thrilled to announce our first annual Tainted Love Contest.

We want your absolute worst.

The most wretched, overwrought and bruise-worthy purple prose you can possibly fit into one sentence containing no more than seventy words.

We want a sentence so bad your keyboard will cringe and your monitor might explode with the awfulness of it.

Here are examples written by RU staffers:

Sloppy kisses sounded romantic in a bodice-ripping way, but with his tongue slithering down her throat like a slightly furred snake and his stale tobacco flavored saliva mixing disgustingly with hers, she decided to leave French kissing to the French in the future, and to avoid men with hot eyes and flecks of egg in their beards altogether. (Becke)

The party was winding down, as parties do, when my wandering eye caught the startling beauty I just had to have – her black ski mask contrasted with the rough and tumble red locks dangling from just under the hem, and the blue eyes that sparkled with mischief from behind the twin holes in the mask as she aimed the Uzi in our general direction. (Carrie)

It wasn’t the smoldering like a five-day tire fire, wanna-get-lucky look Wanda gave Earl beneath her press-on lashes, or her soft, sweet lips, reminiscent of a mashed praline on Bourbon Street in mid-July, but her breasts, which resembled two fried eggs that had him yearning for a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast. (Jen)