I found a link to a website that claims to analyze text and tell you which author you write like. Usually I’m really paranoid and don’t do that kind of thing. But I was bored, so I tried it. I ran three selections through it: one from my blog, one from an unfinished children’s story, and one from an unfinished novel.
When I write for my blog, I write like . . .
Margaret Atwood
When I write children’s stories, I write like . . .
Cory Doctorow
When I write novels, I write like . . .
Stephen King
What does this mean, if anything? I’m not sure. I like Margaret Atwood, usually (The Handmaiden’s Tale was awesome, but I couldn’t get into Surfacing or The Robber Bride). I’ve never read any Cory Doctorow (is that an oversight?). I don’t mind being compared to Stephen King. Here’s what I wrote that produced that result:
Charlie’s grandmother always used to say, “No amount of sorry is going to fill that hole.” Those were the words he wanted to throw at the people in their fine black clothes as they lined up to tell him how sorry they were for his loss. Not that it was their fault, but sometimes sorry sounds as hollow as your stomach after the flu. He didn’t tell them that. He stood up straight, trying to look like the young gentleman his grandmother always exhorted him to be, and said thank you nicely.
“Charlie, it’s time to go to the cemetery. Are you ready, son?” asked Father Glen
The boy nodded. He was tired. The stream of unfamiliar faces, the pinch of his new shoes, and the air so stale it hurt to breathe—they had all taken their toll, and now he was about to lay to rest the only family he had ever known. He just wanted it over. There was a dark void on the other side of the funeral service, an uncertain future. It numbed him. Not knowing felt so much safer than the certainty of death.
Hmmm. Loss, cemetery, dark void, funeral, death. Yeah, it does sound a little like Stephen King!
Of course, then I looked up the site and found a Wikipedia article for it. It would seem that everyone writes like Margaret Atwood or Stephen King! Well, aren’t we all awesome! Now if only we were as successful…
It’s been a while since I played with this, so I thought I’d see what it had to say.
It thought my favorite work blog post and one of my better “this day in science history” bits sounded like Arthur Clarke, probably because I was talking about the space shuttle and engineering.
Two general blog posts offered up comparisons to David Foster Wallace and Cory Doctorow (neither of whom I’ve read).
My fairy tale about Elijah’s creation, which I would term child-friendly, nets a comparison to H.P. Lovecraft, which I find terrifying for all our sakes. Equally confusing (but far less alarming) was the comparison from a science fact I wrote about the term “blue moon.”