Most people who do any sort of creative writing aspire to be like one of their favorite authors, from Emily Dickinson to James Joyce to … well, whomever you like! And chances are, if you have read and reread authors over the years some of their style has bled into your everyday prose.
By way of a tweet from a friend I learned that there is now a site called I Write Like that will analyze your writing and match your style with one of the authors in its database.
So as a test I took some of my Thanks Amazon for Linking Me Up With Old Friends … um … I Think … post and fed it to the translator. What did it tell me?
Given I have been a fan of Vonnegut for decades and even bought Jailbird new when it came out in 1979, and have more recently spread my love of his work to my kids, I consider that quite a compliment. Pasting various writings through the years gave different results from Dan Brown to David Foster Wallace and so on.
Take some of your own writing and head on over to IWL and see who you write like – and let me know in the comments!
Source: I Write Like
Interestingly, aside from one review that flagged me as Dan Brown, everything else I write comes up as David Foster Wallace.
I’m sort of jealous you get to be Kurt Vonnegut!
Interesting … I went back and pasted the same bit in again and guess what – David Foster Wallace! Oh well, guess the algorithm needs some work!
Depending on the sample I post, I either write like Stephen King, Dan Brown, or David Foster Wallace. Frankly, it’s kind of mind-bending to think of someone able to write like *both* Dan Brown and David Foster Wallace, so one can only wonder how the software is doing its analysis.
What Classic Author Do You Write Like? http://bit.ly/9Y84UQ