The Bad Prose Confessional: Share an Unfortunate Sentence You Have Written

Solatium

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Optional: Snark on the sentence above you.

I suppose this could cut both ways -- the merely unfortunate, or the comically unfortunate -- so I'll start out by offering one of each.

The last line of my first published story:
And -- though I wasn't sure -- I thought that, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the blonde wink back.

And, from a piece I wrote in my teens:
Her hair was flax-pale and flax-soft and she had an albino's eyes, light light blue with a faint invisible pinkish cast.
 

Maryn

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I don't have it in front of me, but not that long ago I wrote an ambiguous sentence involving an angry character stomping on a cracked sidewalk. Only the way I wrote it, her stomping was doing the cracking.

Brilliant, eh?

Maryn, glad she saw it before anybody else did
 

Stew21

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like Maryn, it's not in front of me, but I'll try to describe it's stupidity.

my MC was leaving the house after an argument with his girlfriend. He was talking to her while tying his shoes, I make a point of him staring at her bare feet for purposes of defiance and the adolescence of the way she turns her ankle to the side. She spoke to him and he some how *sees* that she clinched her teeth (DOH!) when she spoke while in the very next piece of it, i mention yet again that he had never looked up, was indeed still looking down.

SO one has to wonder....is my character wearing PeeWee Herman Shoe Mirrors?

needless to say, it has been corrected, but it did give me a laugh.
 

AnneMarble

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How about A Series of Unfortunate Sentences? Last night, I was looking over some paragraphs I had written. The heroine is staying on the second floor of the hero's house. The hero's assistant takes the heroine up to her room. Later, the hero gives her a guided tour. They go down a hall, then another hall (still on the same floor). Then they go down a staircase. Then they go down a staircase. And the heroine doesn't recognize either of them, so I presume she went up one staircase and down two others, although they only left the second floor once. ;)

When I reread it, I wondered if they were staying in the Winchester Mystery House. :D
 

Jcomp

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I can't think of the exact sentence, but I remember saying that something "quickly sped," which still haunts me.
 

Pagey's_Girl

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I still wish I'd caught "He said it was his most favorite of all her sweaters" before it was too late...
 

kct webber

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'Ain't nothin' gawn stop me now, 'cept my inate inability to processtate cognatious thunk.'

Just kidding--that was from 'Squidbillies'. :)

I used to write shabby incongruous things like 'On walking into the house, the dog bit him on the a**' all the time. I'm better about it now, but I occasionally catch myself in the middle of one.

So who walked into the house--the dog or 'him'? I don't know. *shrugs*
 
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Ghengis Kant

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She sighed. Raising a brow, she asked, "Alex, you didnt forget to lock the door again, right?"

I just wrote that just now. Most first sentences could be a condiate for worst sentence in my world. I need a lot of revising.
 

Rolling Thunder

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He jiggled the keys to find the right one then slid it into her lock.

"There you go, dear. All opened up for ya," he said.


And no, it wasn't supposed to be erotica.
 

Sean D. Schaffer

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"All who are in favor of investigating the disappearance of the 300 missing crew members of the starship Rocnah can make their vote final by pressing the green button in their desk drawers."

One sentence, in one breath, but just try saying it out loud in one breath. This is probably the worst sentence I have ever put to paper.
 

aruna

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In a very absent-minded moment, while writing a blurb for one of my books, I wrote "over the hill" instead of "over the moon" : as in "her parents were over the hill when she turned out to be a musical prodigy" or words to that effect - and put it up on my website! Thank goodness, a friend noticed before the public did and it was quickly changed.... I still squirm when I think of this.
 

Rolling Thunder

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"All who are in favor of investigating the disappearance of the 300 missing crew members of the starship Rocnah can make their vote final by pressing the green button in their desk drawers."

One sentence, in one breath, but just try saying it out loud in one breath. This is probably the worst sentence I have ever put to paper.

I've seen JKR place long sentences like that into her works, Sean. Many times, in fact. Maybe it just comes down to the execution of the thought?
 

TsukiRyoko

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Wow, I've had a LOT of them this year. One of my favorites, "He lit his cigarette in the dark room, awaiting for the lighter to reach the tobacco". Yeah........... After that, I decided to call it a night. I couldn't sleep that night, and the next morning decided to give up my writing once and for all *after throwing my arms into the air beating the crap out of myself :D* and work at Wendy's for the rest of my life (the next hour, I was writing again).