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Why is “It was a dark and stormy night..” not a good opening?

The phrase in question is derided everywhere. Wikipedia calls it infamous and purple prose, the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest references it (google 'worst opening sentence'), but I've always been puzzled as to just what exactly is wrong with it.

Purple prose on Wikipedia is prose that is so "extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself". I don't think the sentence really qualifies on any of those three grounds.

It was used in Snoopy a fair bit, and I originally thought it was either from the cartoon, or because of the cartoon, but it seems to have been the source of derision since it first written, so I remain confused.

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mcalex
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2 Answers2

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That is only part of the sentence, and there’s nothing really wrong with it in itself. The problem lies in the way it continues:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Many readers have felt that it is hopelessly over-written. Compare it with the first few sentences of meteorological description in the second paragraph of Charles Dickens’s ‘Bleak House’:

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.

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It's cliche and camp. You said it yourself; it shows up in Peanuts. If you were to say "It was a dark and..." most English speakers would finish your sentence. That is why it holds little currency among readers, while I do agree that it's not so overwrought as to be considered purple prose. I can't, however, find any criticisms of the opening line originating at the time of Paul Clifford's publication that would suggest that it was scoffed at by then contemporary readers.

tylerharms
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