Monday, July 19, 2010

I Write Like...



This is an interesting tool, and it sort of works:

I Write Like...

Of course, the first excerpt I tried gave me a very, very scary output:



I write like
Stephenie Meyer
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!



Right then and there, I began to question the methodology of this so-called statistical analysis tool. A little while later, after the panic subsided, I questioned the text sample. Maybe there was a little of -shudder- Stephanie Meyer in that particular conversation. Not the emotionally twisted relationship logic, but perhaps her repeated and simple word choice, heavy on emotions, relationships, and conversation.

Surely not all of my writing reflects Meyer's style, I thought. So I looked for the exact opposite, something rich in description and elevated vocabulary. Thank goodness a few other samples gave me other names; Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, Cory Doctorow, Arthur C. Clarke, and Dan Brown. With more random text choices, these names came up more than once: Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, and H.P. Lovecraft. Now there's a list of names that will let me sleep easy at night (ironic that reading those authors often has the opposite affect on many).

The biggest excerpt yielded this result:


I write like
David Foster Wallace
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


I've never read David Foster Wallace, but Wikipedia's summary of his themes and style sparked an excitement in me that will lead to a library trip today:

Wallace used many forms of irony, focusing on individuals' continued longing for earnest, unself-conscious experience, and communication in a media-saturated society. He expressed a desire to write "morally passionate, passionately moral fiction" that could help readers "become less alone inside." In his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, he describes the human condition of daily crises and chronic disillusionment and rejects solipsism, invoking compassion, mindfulness, and existentialism:
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.... The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.... The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.
Now that sounds like my kind of fiction. Maybe if I like it and read more of it, I can pick up some pointers from Wallace on how to write in the style I seem predisposed to use anyway.

I'm also thinking I can use the I Write Like tool to weed out all my Meyer-esque elements.

Who do you think you write like? And, if you used the online tool, did it give you an accurate match?

3 comments:

  1. I used a sample from my WIP and got David Foster Wallace.

    Then I went back to my last big revision and got Douglas Adams twice. This is SOOOOO flattering I can't even stand myself. I'm afraid to try any others!

    - Liz

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  2. Wow! Douglas Adams. Now that you mention it, I can feel a vague similarity in the way the two of you write your humor. I knew there was a reason I liked your work.

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  3. What a fun tool. I found out I write like William Gibson. I haven't read anything by him, but I will certainly check him out.

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