Friend Maewitch sent me a fun internet thingy. You put in a sample of your writing, and it tells you which writer your style is like.
http://iwl.me/
She put in a few samples and came out as Stephen King, JK Rowling, and a "dash of Dan Brown." Which means she's going to be rich!
I put in my personal blog, the edited version of a story I wrote for Nanowrimo in 2002, the novel I finished-finished this past year, and the unedited first draft of Henry V written for Nanowrimo in 2009.
The blog + unedited Henry V = David Foster Wallace = when I don't edit, I'm bound for awards! critical acclaim!
The finished-finished romance novel = Margaret Mitchell = immortality! Or maybe I'm just racist.
The somewhat edited romance story from 2002 = HP Lovecraft = cult following but fame only after death.
To test The Machine I put in some HP Lovecraft text, and the answer did at least come out right. And I know The Machine has Wodehouse in there, cause I entered some Wodehouse text and it came out right. However, I begin to suspect it since Georgette Heyer came out once as Shakespeare, twice as Charles Dickens.
Anyway, now I know what I need to do--just keep rewriting my works, and plugging them into this thing, until they come out as Wodehouse. I suspect if I remove all contractions from my writing, I'll achieve the status of Dickens. Or Shakespeare.
7 comments:
LOLing over the Lovecraft. I always suspected you were a secret cultist with an inordinate fondness for baroque vocabulary. And tentacles
So, I just posted my whole blog up there, and I am not kidding... This ridiculous website says I write like James Joyce. I mean, the ones you got at least make sense in Pull A Writer's Name Out of A Hat World. Margaret Mitchell goes with romance, David Foster Wallace goes with hyper-literate bloggy first person narrative.
But me? My narrative style apparently trends more toward the difficult and obscure... Also in the direction of, well, Long Difficult Prose Describing the Taking of a Shit (Is it because of that post I wrote about hives?). Now, see??? *I* wanted to get Wallace to prove my theory that they probably assign Wallace or David Sedaris to first person narrative in general.
Now, I'm going to have to write a Long Difficult Post about something derivative of Joyce's rendition of shit-taking in Ulysses. Have to live up to my, um, influences, I guess.
I did have an English professor who always said, "The two most important writers in my life have been D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce." Putting aside the weirdness of such a pairing, I must say... I am too lazy a reader and writer to model myself on James Joyce. Furthermore, that professor's odd tastes in literature made more of an impression on me than the works themselves.
Also, Not a Genius. Certainly, of above average intelligence. I'd be okay with being compared to a genius like Wallace by a crappy computer "Name that Writer!" software, even if I probably don't have even, you know, half of Wallace's IQ. Because that suggests I'm writing literate personal narrative that is both (1) intellectually sound and (2) shows that I am well-versed(ish) in the pop culture of my day. But, in any case... Joyce? James Joyce? I didn't even read the whole of Ulysses. I mean, really?
I wonder how much of it is based on vocabulary. (Which would imply you write like a... Dubliner?)
I took a couple paragraphs from one of my stories, and changed the modern swear words to old ones ("fuck" to "dashed") thinking this might bring out the Charles Dickens effect. Instead it gave me Stephen King. lol
Stephen King? Have the people who designed that site actually read any books?
I assume it must have something to do with vocabulary, but also... Sentence structure, syntax, etc. Anything that can be quantified. But you know what I think of quantifying things when it comes even to social science. When it's a matter of art, eh... Well. You can probably guess what I think of that.
Not that I think my blog is actually art. And I'd be hard-pressed to see any of Stephen King's works as such. I mean, you know I'm a snob about these things. I always hated Dickens, so I *loved* the English professor who said, "The reason we read Dickens is to teach you the difference between good fiction...and popular fiction."
But James Joyce? David Foster Wallace? Most of the writers whose names they're using? Definitely art, yes. Except for Dan Brown. Though if I could make a lot of money for writing an over the top and simplistic conspiracy novel badly, I would do it too. But I'd call it business, not art.
Possibly... just possibly... you are taking this Random Silly Internet Game too much to heart!! It's just for fun!! :-D
But I'm not really taking it too seriously. I just think it's an interesting thing for anyone to create in their spare time, and I'm curious what kind of variables they're actually using (beyond vocabulary).
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