Sunday, July 18, 2010

Oh dear ...


I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

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




Click the "Follow this Blog" button now - I am merciful to my followers: they will be devoured by Cthulhu first ...

Bob points us to a pretty fun site: I Write Like. It analyzes your writing, and tells you which famous author had a similar writing style. Perhaps this explains why I haven't been sleeping well lately.

But I messed around with it, trying different types of posts to see what it produced for a result. I don't think it's analyzing style so much as subject matter:

Automatic Pistols, the Burgess Shale, and the evolution of design was what made it say my style was Lovecraftian.

The Canals of Mars the Climate Research Unit caused it to say I wrote like Arthur C. Clark.

The Inherent Contradictions of the (American) Welfare State gave me James Joyce.

Edmund Halley, the Board of Longitude, and Harvard's Veritas
? Jonathan Swift.

So it's fun, but I guess I won't give up my day job. I'd pay cash money, though, to see what one of JayG's road rage rants tags out as ...

UPDATE 18 July 2010 19:37: David shoots, he scores! With perhaps the best blog post title ever, too. And didn't the Mamas and the Papas record a song, "California Fhtagn"?

9 comments:

A said...

I keep getting Shakespeare, CS Lewis, and Oliver North?? Obviously some sort of glitch in the programing.

Everyone knows my style is more Alfred E Newman....lol

SiGraybeard said...

Four blog entries:

Cory Doctorow
Kurt Vonnegut
Stephen King
Cory Doctorow

I think I have to ponder this for a while.

Bob said...

I'm curious as to how many writers they have in the database. And I would have to guess that the thing works off of triggerwords, so you could probably use an author's pet words to get a particular result, like using bad craziness, mescaline, acid trip, greedheads to get Hunter S. Thompson. Using eldritch would probably guarantee H.P. Lovecraft.

Bob said...

Plugging in some chapters of Tom Sawyer resulted in Mark Twain; plugging in Psalm 100 from the King James Bible resulted in William Shakespeare. Not a bad result, since the KJV was written almost during Shakespeare's lifetime.

Anonymous said...

Dan Brown here. I have read more then a few of his books. But than I read everything from, David Weber to John Ringo to John Patterson and Wilbur Smith.
Throw in a little Btad Thor and Vince Flynn with some S M Stirling and I can be happy.

I am wondering. Clive Barker or Robert McCammon's "Swan's Song" or "Baal"? For JayG's style?

Tangalor said...

Douglas Adams? Srsly? That's Fantastic! Not Light Fantastic, but close... Restaurant at the End of the Universe indeed.

Anonymous said...

One novel I wrote (MHI: Northeast, you can read it on my blog) got me labeled as writing like Stephen King.

A second (unpublished) got me labeled as writing like Dan Brown

A third (unfinished) got me labeled as writing like Chuck Palahniuk. Who the frak is Chuck Palahniuk?

-Raptor

Tangalor said...

raptorsnest: Who the frak is Chuck Palahniuk?

Author of Fight Club, Choke, Lullaby... you'd know him from Fight Club, if'n you frequent movies that make you want to punch someone or blow up Credit Holding Buildings...

We are everywhere. ;)

NotClauswitz said...

I keep getting David Foster Wallace (who?), but also Chuck Palahniuk and a couple of Cory Doctorows? With a Stephen King here and a Dan Brown there - the occasional Joyce and Jack London once...