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Is “it was a dark and stormy night” really such a bad opening line? Workmanlike, efficient, establishes scene and mood. Doesn’t cut to core tension the way “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or “happy families are all alike…” do, but it’s not bad.
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Replying to @vgr
Prestige would be Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who invented the historical novel, but is now primarily remembered for a bad writing contest named after him, the opening line to the worst novel never written. bulwer-lytton.com Dickens was popular trash.
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That’s not a rewrite since it loses most of the info of the original: night time, specific kind of bad weather, dark (so likely moonless). I’d go with “it was a dark and stormy night in London”