Who do you write like?

[TheFifthElement]

Just cut n' paste a piece of your writing into this website and it'll analyse your sentence structure, word choice and writing style and compare it to the style of a number of famous writers and tell you who you write like.

http://iwl.me/

I write like David Foster Wallace (seriously, I checked 6 pieces of writing and they all came out "David Foster Wallace"!).

Who do you write like?

[sixsmith]

I'm led to question the veracity of this website's analysis given that I too write like David Foster Wallace.

[TheFifthElement]

Celine Bijleveld from The Guardian writes like James Joyce, and Charlie Brooker writes like Oscar Wilde.

[OrphanPip]

I think it works off of word choice or something, not sure on the methodology.

My blog post consistently came up with David Foster Wallace, where I'm mostly using contemporary language.

An excerpt from a Forster short story came back with Mary Shelley.

And an essay I wrote back in college on gender issues came up with Edgard Allan Poe.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Edit: I put in some Spenser, and it came back as Shakespeare, so I definitely think it works off of the frequency of certain words being used.

[Taliesin]

After pasting some of my posts to the site there, I mostly get Dan Brown, H.P. Lovecraft, Wodehouse, Vonnegut, occasionally even James Joyce and when I post while drunk, David Foster Wallace.

[sixsmith]

Hemingway = James Fenimore Cooper
Joyce = Joyce
Saul Bellow = Oscar Wilde

[Emil Miller]

I entered an extract from a novel I had written and I was told that I write like Dan Brown. I was just about to hang myself when I thought I'd try something from the book I'm currently writing and it came up with H.P. Lovecraft. Next, I tried something else of mine and it said William Gibson. Finally, I was informed that I write like Bram Stoker.
So my next novel will be set in a Transylvanian dystopia where an evil vampire has hidden the Holy Grail in a haunted house.
I don't suppose the advertisement asking users to subscribe to their... 'awesome newsletter to learn how to become a better writer' has anything to do with it.

[dafydd manton]

Oh, well, if it's awesome............! Any writer that uses the word "awesome" in that context deserves hanging, at best.

[Emil Miller]

I thought I would see if the system uses word recognition to establish an author's style, so I typed in this:

Harry liked to potter around in his garden before going down to his favourite pub, The Jolly Potter.
Once there, Harry would drink beer from a pewter goblet by the fire.
Harry would often order Phoenix ale, which was his favourite beer. It was no secret that Harry kept a stock of it in his bed chamber.
Although he weighed twenty stone, he would often philosophise in the deathly hours of early morning about starting a diet which would make him feel more comfortable in his hallowed home.

What did it come up with? Yes, you've guessed it.......Jonathan Swift!

[Niamh]

Well! I tried three different sections from three different types of novels i'm working on. One serious novel based in Ireland, one fantasy and one total fluff!

serious- James Joyce
Fantasy- Stephen King
Fluff- P G Wodehouse

[kiki1982]

I tried with the first part of an essay that is on here: PG Wodehouse.

Then I tried with another part of the same essay and that came out with DF Wallace.

So... definitely vocab-based then...

[OrphanPip]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j93L3sF-VA-F548doKe70er5uD0wD9H0DAU81

It works off of an adapted search engine algorithm that uses keywords and sentence length to determine who you write like.

[Pensive]

I posted poetry and got H.G Wells! :p

[Scheherazade]

Charles Dickens (assignments) and Lewis Carroll (emails).

[qimissung]

You should send some of those in for publication, then, Scher! I wold love to read some of those Lewis Carroll emails. :)

[hack]

I'll forward you one, next time he writes. (my last post was R.L.Stevensonesque)

[Scheherazade]

You should send some of those in for publication, then, Scher! I don't know about that... I think it means that my emails are mostly full of "gibberish":

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


Tried with my Forum posts; a toss up between Victor Hugo and Dan Brown.

[dafydd manton]

I very much regret that, since I am supposed to be a writer of comedy, I have been found to write like James Joyce. I further regret that, in light of the above, I shall be taking no further part in this Forum, since I have recently committed suicide.

Oh, you'll love this. I pressed the wrong button somewhere, and my text was just the following, repeated hundreds of times:

Income Tax Personal Allowances & Taxable Bands - 2009/10

When I clicked Analyze, it came up with Margaret Atwood!!

[Lokasenna]

Apparently, my blog entries are like H. G. Wells - well, that's no bad thing!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Just cut n' paste a piece of your writing into this website and it'll analyse your sentence structure, word choice and writing style and compare it to the style of a number of famous writers and tell you who you write like.

http://iwl.me/

I write like David Foster Wallace (seriously, I checked 6 pieces of writing and they all came out "David Foster Wallace"!).

Who do you write like?

I, on the other hand, got Arthur Clarke, Bram Stoker, Stephen King and James Joyce! It does this in a split second! It must use a very few key-words from one's text.

[tonywalt]

Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams and, yes, of course David F Wallace. It's a word search/match engine, but interesting and hard NOT to do it.

[Delta40]

First sample - Stephen King.

[mona amon]

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

[AuntShecky]

I plugged in a passage from my novella, The Lyin' King (in the Short Story Forum) shortly after I finished it, just over a year ago in March. I don't know what I was expecting -- maybe a postmodern writer like Donald Barthelme or at least a comic writer like Peter DeVries. Certainly I wasn't expecting the 18th century writer that came up -- Daniel Defoe!

Yeah, right --yer ol' Aunt "Robinson Crusoe Moll Flanders " Shecky

[Hawkman]

When not writing like myself I write like PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, HH Monroe, Douglas Addams, Terry Pratchett, or maybe Alan Coran - mostly. It depends on who I feel like sending up. Oh, I forgot Raymond Chandler (or was it Dashiell Hammett) :D

[SleepyWitch]

Wow, I got Ursula K. LeGuin. If only it were true :)

[Hawkman]

You know, I don't really think the analyser is particularly smart. I fed it a bit of a western and it said I wrote like Margaret Mitchell. I fed it a fairy tale, deliberately styled on the brothers Grimm, possibly with a twist of Hans Christian Anderson, and it said I wrote like J D Salinger, but what took the biscuit was a detective story deliberately written in the style PG Wodehouse and it said I wrote like James Joyce! I wonder what it would make of a piece I'd deliberately written in the style of JJ. Tolkien perhaps!

[stlukesguild]

Well... when I entered a blog post on fashion and art, I was informed that I wrote like Oscar Wilde. I was ready to accept that as I have no doubt that my writing has been quite influenced by the more florid examples of 19th century prose. And after all... I quite love Wilde, Pater, Gautier, etc...

But then I entered a second blog post... an essay on Raphael and his mistress/model... and I was informed that I wrote like Dan Brown! :sosp: So anyone writing about the Renaissance writes like Dan Brown? It would seem so... because upon entering a selection from Vasari's Lives of the Artists... I was again informed that I wrote like Dan Brown. :out:

I then entered a poem by Baudelaire... a meditation upon a Renaissance painting of the Madonna... and what do you know...? Dan Brown!

Damn! It seems Dan Brown is a better writer than I thought. :goof:

[Jack of Hearts]

Got Stephen King for short story not published here, Arthur Clark for The Face of the Earth (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?57827-The-Face-of-the-Earth&highlight=) and Edgar Allan Poe for Untitled Composition 25 (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?65011-Untitled-Composition-25).


What do you think o' that, Litnet? After all, a few of you have read Jack of Hearts' output for years...


So funny-- starting out here, this poster was so eager to have a thick archive full of poems and stories. And now that he's got one, it just feels like a useless snail trail of junk. So much for that dream.










J


EDIT: For okcupid profile, this reader got st.lukesguild

[qimissung]

I write like H.P. Lovecraft. If only my belief system was well-equipped to believe this rather lurid fantasy. I'm pretty sure it's because I used an old blog post that included the words gun and horror. Oh well, it was beautiful while it lasted.

[qimissung]

Got Stephen King for short story not published here, Arthur Clark for The Face of the Earth (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?57827-The-Face-of-the-Earth&highlight=) and Edgar Allan Poe for Untitled Composition 25 (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?65011-Untitled-Composition-25).


What do you think o' that, Litnet? After all, a few of you have read Jack of Hearts' output for years...


So funny-- starting out here, this poster was so eager to have a thick archive full of poems and stories. And now that he's got one, it just feels like a useless snail trail of junk. So much for that dream.


J


EDIT: For okcupid profile, this reader got st.lukesguild






Dreams do die, Jack of Hearts. Or maybe it's just gone into abeyance. I would keep writing. As Anne Lamott said, "Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. But publishing won't do any of those things; you'll never get in that way."

So, please keep writing. I always liked the way that light glints off the silver trail of the slow-moving, obscure and unadorned snail.

[Snowqueen]

I got Margaret Mitchell too. I didn't see it coming to be honest!

[prendrelemick]

David Foster Wallace.


I try to write like Sue Townsend, may she rest in peace.

[YesNo]

I put in a poem into the analyzer and got Daniel Defoe. When I added one of those 50 word stories to that I got David Foster Wallace.

[Emil Miller]

I put in a poem into the analyzer and got Daniel Defoe. When I added one of those 50 word stories to that I got David Foster Wallace.

:lol: