Wednesday, July 28, 2010

We're All Literary Greats Now

We recently came across an amazingly inventive site I Write Like last week and can't get enough. Simply copy and paste in your own writing -- or that of a friend's -- and find out which literary great your wordy way most closely approximates. Using an algorithm called a Bayesian classifier (often used to fight spam), the "analyzer" recognizes textual features -- number of words, frequency of commas, directness of speech -- to help you meet your authorial doppelganger. Ariella was dubbed David Foster Wallace-like, while Dan got Cory Doctorow. You're up next, and we'd love to hear who you get....

11 comments:

Taryn.Simpson@gmail.com said...

I submitted 2 separate writing samples and the two writers I write most like:

1. Stephen King
2. Dan Brown

Now to get the paycheck of these guys...(sigh).

Liz Seegert said...

I did this test last week & was analyzed as Margaret Atwood based on my blog copy.

I did it again today with two different samples, one academic and one feature article - academic was David Foster Wallace and feature was HP Lovecraft. Very Interesting combination there.

JR Branson said...

Ok, after three attempts, it looks like David Foster Wallace was my fellow writing buddy...born the same year I was and killed himself a couple of years ago -- and he was way more successful than I!

I was hoping my designation would keep changing like everyone else...but it didn't, so I guess I need to remove all sharp objects and medications until my career turns around...

Karen Hart said...

I submitted two writing samples as well. For the speech text I submitted it came back James Fenimoore Cooper. For the children's book I'm working on, Stephen King. . .

Bookpod said...

This was a lot of fun.

My commercial writing runs the gamut from Arthur Clarke to H.P. Lovecraft.

My blog (bookpod.wordpress.com): James Fenimore Cooper, Chuck Palahniuk, Dan Brown, Ian Fleming, David Foster Wallace, Stephen King (I think it's time for me to find a voice, eh?)

My first novel (Summer Long-a-coming): H.P.Lovecraft. This means I write for IBM and myself in the same "cosmic horror" style?

For a long essay I wrote ("Return to Poland") and a book about nurses (The First Year of Nursing): Kurt Vonnegut. How did I end up writing like a writer whose work leaves me cold?

The novel I'm working on now: David Foster Wallace, J.L. Rowling, Leo Tolstoy, Kurt Vonnegut, Dan Brown, James Joyce, H.P.Lovecraft, Stephen King. (I think this is not a good sign!)

Thanks for sending out the IWL link. I'm adding it on Sunday to the Caprices section of my website: www.bookpod.org

Allan Leicht said...

So that you know I am not making this up:

Your Badge
I write like
James Joyce

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

~

Meakin Armstrong said...

I found this a little while ago and tried an experiment: I entered an a real editorial contract I'd just signed and got Stephen King. I entered my own writing and got HP Lovecraft. I entered some real Stephen King text and got Dan Brown.

Alan Perlman said...

The identification and description of writing/speaking style is devilishly difficult. Scholars have devoted their entire lives to it.

"I Write Like" is a fun game that captures some of the elements of style. But composing a text involves a huge number of decisions, only some of which can be spotted by an unthinking machine.

I speak from first-hand knowledge: most of my academic work has been in stylistic analysis, and I currently advise attorneys and others on style-related issues like plagiarism and anonymous authorship (www.language-expert.net).

Style markers can be obvious (e.g., -ise rather than -ize tells a lot about the speaker) or subtle (use of a word with an unusual meaning; choice of one idiom over another).

In any event, capturing them all by machine is impossible, for the same reason that machines cannot really understand langauge the way people do.

I'm not surprised that the same person finds that he/she "writes like" more than one person. This inconsistency reveals the unreliability of superficial surface analysis, as well as the machine's failure to get at the vast range of things people actually do when they compose a text.

BTW, I write like Kurt Vonnegut.

Paul Nuti said...

I turned up Cory Doctorow two times, using a speech and a newsletter article. It appears I now know what is on my summer reading list...

Colleen Davis said...

My friends would probably agree with I WRITE LIKE's identification of my multiple personalities. An excerpt of one of my magazine articles came up as David Foster Wallace, a chapter from my mystery novel was Stephen King, and a technical piece for Gotham came up as Dan Brown.

I'm not taking it personally -- we're Ghostwriters! A flexible writing style is a huge asset. But one question, has anyone been told they write like a female author?

Judy Leaver said...

I came up as David Foster Wallace, too...could it be wired in his favor (or ours, if we like his style?)