Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Call Me King Christie Dickens

I just learned of a website that analyzes a sample of your writing to tell you which famous writer you write like. Supposedly it analyzes "your word choice and writing style" to make the comparison.

I have no idea how much effort the creators put into making it scientific, but it's definitely fun. A chapter from my last book in which I wax philosophical about pudding shakers was compared to the work of Agatha Christie. A sappy column I wrote after Vonnegut died scored me a Stephen King comparison. And two paragraphs from my brand-new book (which I just got in the mail today!) was written in the style of Charles Dickens.

But here's the funny thing: The book is called "It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences" -- a play on Dickens! And, no, the excerpt did not include those words or any other Dickens stuff. Spooky.

Here's the site: http://iwl.me/


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4 comments:

Adrian Morgan said...

Speaking of Vonnegut, the essay quoted here is apparently written in his style.

An essay I wrote as a parody of pointless, rambling, obscure essays turns out to be written in the style of Harry Harrison, which is so much the worse for Harry Harrison.

Some fantasy fiction that I wrote in the late nineties was compared with J. K. Rowling, but in the case of one scene at least, if I simply change every occurence of the word "wizard" to "magician", then suddenly it is more in the style of Ray Bradbury.

A very short piece of fiction of ... shall we say ... slightly more mature content was written in the style of Vladimir Nabokov.

June Casagrande said...

That's hilarious that changing "wizard" to "magician" saved you from being compared to Rowling!

Debbie Diesen said...

Way too much fun. I pasted in a blog post and was told I write like H.P. Lovecraft. Then I pasted in the entire text of The Pout-Pout Fish, and the analyzer told me I write like Stephen King!

June Casagrande said...

Ah, yes. You gotta watch out for those Pout-Pout fish. You never know when one's going to hobble you or douse you with pig's blood or unleash a death plague on the world. : )

By the way, got my copy of "The Barefooted, Bad-Tempered Baby Brigage." Adorable!

http://www.amazon.com/Barefooted-Bad-Tempered-Baby-Brigade/dp/1582462747

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