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Sunday, August 28, 2011

I Write Like . . .

I just saw a link to a webpage that allows you to cut-and-paste something you wrote into a text box. Using some sort of computer voodoo, the website then determines what famous writer you write like.

So I decided I should test this out. I took the first chapter of Failstate, my debut, soon-to-be-published novel, and this is what I got:


I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!


Huh. I've never read Chuck, but I have heard of him.

So I decided to see if this would vary at all if I submitted text from a different story. So I dusted off the first chapter of Numb, my Christian space opera/espionage thriller. And this is what I got from that:


I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!


Um, wow.

So you tell me? Good thing that my style varied so much between two books? Or evidence of a lack of consistent voice on my part?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I used the website several weeks ago, but I wasn't sure how accurate it is. I kept getting "Stephen King." For fun I tried pasting some news articles, which all turned up with James Joyce. Go figure.

So I'm still not sure whether to trust the website or not.

Kristen Stieffel said...

John, I think the different results are probably because you use different voices for each POV character.

Phil, as a journalist I find your results with news stories amusing. Because I'm pretty sure J Joyce isn't the tone most of us aim for. ;)

Unknown said...

Yeah, I should have mentioned this before, but I took the news articles from Yahoo.com. I think it's actually fairly fitting, too.