1 Shakespeare [thinking]: {at his desk} "No real writer would take this job..." I'll show her.
2 Shakespeare [thinking]: All I need is a good opening, then it will all flow from there. {camera pulls back to show Ophelia head in her hands at her desk, hidden from Will's view by the partition between them}
3 Shakespeare [thinking]: Something dramatic to draw the reader in from the first sentence... Aha!
4 Shakespeare [typing]: It was a dark and stormy night in Hobbiton.

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.

So begins the novel Paul Clifford, published in 1830, written by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The opening words have since become immortalised by, among others, Charles M. Schulz in Peanuts, and by the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held annually by the English department of San Jose State University.