Via PC, a nifty tool: feed it some text and it tells you who you write like.
From a more-or-less random sample of my writing on this site, more than 50% comes back telling me I write like David Foster Wallace. I’d never heard about him until now, but wikipedia lists his form as “postmodern literature” and “hysterical realism”. I can see how that cap would fit. But Wallace hanged himself in 2008. That’s not so good.
Outliers include the post from the other day about tits and teeth news presenter selection, which is like Stephen King, possibly confirming Pablo’s dim view of it. The dam breaks, my only real attempt at satire, apparently reads like James Joyce. My epic and furious response to Chris Trotter from a while back is in the style of H P Lovecraft, which I think is rather fitting.
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Well if it said you’d written The Stand it’d be a compliment. Most other things by King, not so much.
…and apparently my PhD proposal is David Foster Wallace, too.
A hahaha! Fed in a brief extract from my thesis and it said I write like Dan Brown!
*looks about for big cheque, obviously misplaced somewhere*
I tried two lots of my prose; both reported me as Oscar Wilde, which isn’t that bad.
A piece of mine on web fiction series, aiming at a relatively general fan audience came up as DF Wallace.
A part of my post on the history of education on the Standard, came up as HP Lovecraft.
Well I would have thought the first piece was closest to Lovecraft’s (as reported) weird science fiction. I don’t think it’s a very good programme for analysing writing style.
Hmmm. I also came up as DF Wallace, although I believe that he resembled MY writing style! :-0
( I use the past tense because he has left this mortal coil).
It looks like the writing analysis generator is a bit crude, and anything dry and analytical is viewed as DF Wallace-ish.
1 paragraph gave me david foster wallace
3 came back with margaret atwood and alas, 7 back to DFW
I’m going to have to brighten up the posts with a bit more colour :)
I write like David Foster Wallace too, or occasionally Dan Brown (so I too can wear the cone of shame).
Interestingly, David Foster Wallace writes like Stephen King, who writes like Stephenie Meyer.
hmmm.
Has Tolley seen this?
Year 3 – Dan Brown
Year 4 – Stephen King
Sort of thing.
Bookie, I fed it Joyce and it came back … Joyce. Trotter comes back as Kurt Vonnegut. Danyl mimicking Trotter comes back as … Wallace.
But when I feed it Anne Tolley’s latest press release, it returns “Douglas Adams”. I think Adams would enjoy the weirdness of that.
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Nice.
lol Quite fitting really.
My style must be rather different to you guys, according to the site I write like Mario Puzo??
I fed it my entire thesis and it came out as Wallace. Which is kinda reassuring but I was sort of hoping it’d be Stephen King, just for the lolz
This helps explain things: http://azstarnet.com/entertainment/article_3882dbbe-544a-5d56-8305-5c4507f1b0b0.html
I read elsewhere that apparently DF Wallace writes like Stephen King :P