I Write Like…

#writing #amwriting

I found this interesting…

Thanks to a Facebook friend, I found a page where you can plug in some text from your novel, and it will tell you which famous author your writing style most resembles. I decided to give it a try. I grabbed some text from my latest, pulp horror novel, copied it and pasted it into the box, and pressed the ANALYZE button. It spat out the result of Agatha Christie. I think I may have read one of her mysteries when I was in high school. Certainly Ms. Christie’s works had little to no influence on my writing… or did it?

I write like
Agatha Christie

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

Intrigued, I decided to test this program further. I went and grabbed some text from the novel prior to my latest work, a fantasy piece set in an Arabian Nights setting. The result for that text was Anne Rice. I don’t ever recall reading her work, although I did watch that vampire movie. <chuckles>

 

I write like
Anne Rice

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

Alright. I intended the style of that piece to be different. My word choices were a bit more formal, flowery even. I would guess, I thought, that both of these chosen samples were a bit more stylized than my typical fantasy genre writing. Therefore, I plugged in the first chapter of my first high fantasy novel. James Fenimore Cooper. By now I am feeling quite the uneducated lout, because even with the literature classes I took in college, I don’t remember the name of the author, let alone having read any of his work. I am a little ignorant, and not very well read. At least that is how I was feeling.

I write like
James Fenimore Cooper

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

But wait, I said. That first chapter was written as a prologue of sorts, the point of view was first person, while the rest of the novel was in third person. Perhaps I might get a different result if I choose a chapter from the main body of that work, rather than a prologue chapter… Now THIS author I have read:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

Now I know I am no Agatha Christie/Anne Rice/James Fenimore Cooper/Stephen King. I know that this program is an algorithm or whatever… that looks for patterns and word choices and compares them to a finite list of authors. But should I feel stupid for not knowing the works of all these authors? Or should I feel honored that I am so diverse?

I am thinking neither. This is just some dumb thing one shares on FACEBOOK, for giggles. (I did not share on FB, other than this blog entry will paste there by default. I just enjoy the fun. Hope you all enjoy it as well. This blog post has no meaningful insight, but was just a distraction from my day. Perhaps a waste of a few minutes.

One last thing. I took all the text from this blog entry, just to see what result I might get. Nothing literary about it. This is who I must really write like:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

Muahahaha

All images and content copyright © 2011-2014 ~ Mark Adam Thomas

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