Who Do You Write Like?

Last year my region found a great little site named I Write like.Me (http://iwl.me/). All you do is cut & paste a couple of paragraphs from your novel and it evaluates which famous author you write like. (btw, there is no sign-in or membership or anything and they don't store anything.)

Mine came up Chuck Palahniuk. I must admit I have never read anything by him but he is famous for the Fight Club, which I also never saw.

Last year I came up with Dan Brown. I think I'd rather be Dan than Chuck. LOL

If you try repeating it with different sections of your novel, you'll come up with different authors.

Mine came up H.P. Lovecraft. I guess I have to read something of his?

I inputted various sections of fanfic I wrote, and part of what I'm working on for Nano. Mine came up Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, HP Lovecraft, Rudyard Kipling and Gertrude Stein.

I don't know what to say.

I am completely dismayed. Supposedly I write like Dan Brown whose books I can't stand. OH well, at least his books sell.

OK. After Reading Catana's post I tried pasting in another part from a different chapter. This time I write like Stephen King, an author I don't read because of the excess of blood and gore.

So what does this mean? Could I possibly be penning a bestseller?

I came up with J.D. Salinger, I'm okay with that.

I tried it on a couple of sections and got James Joyce - both times. I've read Joyce (in my teens & twenties) and I don't see it, I've never invented a synthetic language in my life...um...not a whole language.

I am not sure if I should be insulted or not ;-)
Dan Brown, David Foster Wallace, Ernest Hemingway ???

I will have to look up Wallace because that name didn't sound famous to me.

I suspect that everybody writes like -- themselves.

I did this quite a while back. What I was writing then got me mostly Steven King, with a smattering of Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood and William Gibson. An old short story that never was accepted came up Shakespeare! Yeah, right.

I tried my current NaNo. The sections from my Female MC POV got mostly Cory Doctorow and the sections from the Male MC POV got J D Salinger, Chuck Palahniuk and Steven King. So if nothing else I guess it shows I do have their voices different!

What I did notice is that outdoor scenes tended to get Rudyard Kipling. Anyone else see that?

And there seems to be a predominance of male writers in the database...

I plugged in my first Pen post from this evening (where Kat gets her cocoa with Baileys): Steven King. LOL

I tried Kat's suggestion and plugged in today's post to the Pen. It came back Cory Doctorow.

Then I tried several paragraphs from today's NaNo writing. I got Mark Twain. I can live with that. I've also had Margaret Atwood in the past, but that was for a completely different type of story.

It will be interesting to do this again with tomorrow's writing, just to see if it's consistent.

My first try with the opening page of a category romance I got Stephen King.

I wish they would add more authors to the list. I pulled HP Lovecraft twice, and that's good. At least it wasn't Stephen King.

Today my MMc corresponds to Cory Doctorow and my FMC to Isaac Asimov.

I tried this pre-November and got a random bunch of authors. However, when I just now tried it with different sections of my current 'novel' I got Kurt Vonnegut each and every time!

This excerpt was Margaret Atwood... I like her stories. ;-)

That was fun....I got a spattering of the above. I put the same chunk in several times just to make sure there was some "analysis" going on and it was consistent. : )