Tags
a question for the lake, analyze your writing, as above not so below, chris dickle, david foster wallace, isaac asimov, james joyce, lk winter, margaret atwood, round and round it goes, stephen king, writing chameleon
Thanks to LK Winter for this fun little tool. His writing came out like Margaret Atwood’s. Mine came out like ….
David Foster Wallace
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
I’ve never read any David Foster Wallace, so perhaps I need to add him to my reading list. Got any recommendations, those of you who’ve read his work?
Okay, the first piece of text I had analyzed was a blog post. I decided to try it on some of my fiction. I chose a selection from the story “Chris Dickle” in Greenville. Here’s the result:
Pulled another story from Greenville, this time “Revelation” and came up with David Foster Wallace again.
Gonna try one more time. A different short story altogether.
For my story, “A Question for the Lake,” I come up with this result:
One more, just for the heck of it. (Can’t leave well enough alone, can I?) This time for “As Above, Not So Below:”
That’s it, people. Just call me a Writing Chameleon.
—–
[Addendum - July 16, 2010: I realized after writing this that I had inadvertently used the working title of one of my short stories, "A Question for the Lake," rather than its final title, "Round & Round It Goes." You can find that story under the Writing tab at the top of the blog.]
Yikes! I write like George Orwell.
This is a fascinating piece of software. I pasted in some of my own blog entries at random, and I was told I write like:
David Foster Wallace; Arthur C Clarke (2); Dan Brown (3); Ursula Le Guin; and Stephen King.
It’s being told three times that I write like Dan Brown which worries me. Dan Brown?!!
The tacit message is clear. I should abandon blogging and take up another hobby.
I want to know the entire list of authors this site uses for the comparisons. (Dan Brown? Who knew?) How many authors are on the list and what kind of analysis is being done? Average word length? Average sentence length? Particular words used?
Judy – When I plugged some of Daughter’s writing into the app, George Orwell was the result. I’ve got his book “Animal Farm” on my bedside table, awaiting a read.
But the style of “Animal Farm” is a lot different than the style of “1984″ or his essays. Which George Orwell do I write like?
I read “1984″ ages ago and barely remember the plot, let alone the style and voice. I’ve never read “Animal Farm,” so I have no point of comparison. If Orwell writes in different styles, I wonder what would happen if we put his writing into the analyzer. Would he come out as himself, or someone else? I’m tempted to try it!
Good idea! Let me know what you come up with.
Well, I’ll be! I typed the first two-and-a-quarter paragraphs of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” into the analyzer and came up with … George Orwell! So far, so good.
However, when I entered a portion of the text of a Stephen King essay into the analyzer, it came back with H. P. Lovecraft.
Here’s a link to the King essay I used. In it he discusses censorship:
http://www.stephenking.com/library/essay/book-banners:_adventure_in_censorship_is_stranger_than_fiction_the.html
What does this tell us about the analyzer?