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Discussion I Write Like...

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction and Writing Resource' started by The_Face, Jul 12, 2010.

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  1. The_Face

    The_Face Ex-Manager star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 22, 2003
    This is a tool that claims to analyze word choice and writing style to decide which famous author it thinks your style most resembles.

    I'm not convinced on the accuracy of this thing, but the results are sometimes interesting - or funny.

    I put in a scene from my current style-experiment "Dead Money" and it gave me Chuck Palahniuk. Chapters One and Two of "Galaxy of Suspects" flattered me with Vladimir Nabokov. (!)

    Scenes taken from my two "Braken Starblaster" fics offered up Stephen King, Harry Harrison, and Dan Brown. These are fics which draw heavy inspiration from Douglas Adams, which is why I cracked up when it suggested that the Archive version of "The Other Side" (a first-person murder mystery) was written like the Hitchhiker's Guide author.

    It's fun to play with though, so I thought I'd share.

    Who do you (supposedly) write like? Any ideas why the program guessed that author? Any insight as to why it's right-on or completely wrong?
     
  2. brodiew

    brodiew Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 11, 2005
    Interesting concept. I never really thought about my style in this fashion.

    Processing...[face_thinking]
     
  3. YodaKenobi

    YodaKenobi Former TFN Books Staff star 6 VIP

    Registered:
    May 27, 2003
    I keep getting Dan Brown pretty consistently and Douglas Adams a few times... So basically I hate this thing.
     
  4. FelsGoddess

    FelsGoddess Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 5, 2004
    That's interesting. I got five or six different people, depending on the story and style.
     
  5. darksideyesplease

    darksideyesplease Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2005
    I got Dan Brown for the first 4 chapters of Ruin. Then I put in my big action scene and it said William Shakespeare.
     
  6. zonzo

    zonzo Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Dec 3, 2007
    Well, so far I've been consistently writing like Kurt Vonnegut... I like this :)
     
  7. NYCitygurl

    NYCitygurl Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2002
    I had fun playing with this [facfe_tongue]

    Stephen King (3)
    Ian Fleming
    Dan Brown (4)
    Jack London
    Chuck Palahniuk
    James Joyce (2)
    Margaret Atwood
    George Orwell


    I don't know whether I'm please to be somewhat consistant, or laugh at the choices.

    I will say that I tried my NSWFF fics, and I got Rowling for the Harry Potter and Tolkien for the LOTR. So either I should stop writing fanfic and turn pro write now because I'm about to become famous, or it picked out certain words belonging to the fandom.
     
  8. brodiew

    brodiew Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 11, 2005
    Mybe someone can tell me because I haven't been trying to write like anyone else. Might be fun to try and write like Christopher Moore, though. [face_whistling]
     
  9. Lilith Demodae

    Lilith Demodae Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 1, 1999
    Depending on the story:

    Dan Brown
    J.K. Rowling
    Stephen King
     
  10. Idrelle_Miocovani

    Idrelle_Miocovani Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 5, 2005
    Seems like a lot of us are hitting Dan Brown. :p

    All of my Harry Potter fanfic, no matter what the genre, came out as JK Rowling. My Doctor Who fanfic was also JK Rowling.

    My Hamlet/Ophelia fics came out as HP Lovecraft.

    The Isolation Log (a diary challenge) came out as Rudyard Kipling.

    Dead Man Walking was Dan Brown.

    This Time Around had several, depending on the type of scene: action scenes were Dan Brown, character-driven scenes were Vladimir Nabokov and plot-driven scenes were Harry Harrison.

    ... interesting. 8-}
     
  11. darksideyesplease

    darksideyesplease Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2005
    as a side note. I simply typed in...

    "Kill the spare!" Voldemort commanded.

    and JK Rowling popped up. lol

    then I wrote a very nasty quote in there and had Hermione saying it. JK still popped up even though nothing that perverted would ever be published in a HP book. Maybe some adult fan fiction... lol. But it seemed as though Hermione was the key word over everything else.
     
  12. Tarsier

    Tarsier Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2005
    I don't really think it's accurate, but it is fun to play with. Mostly it thinks I write like James Joyce, with an occassional Douglas Adams, Dan Brown, and Stephen King. I tried some non-fiction just to compare and it came up with H.P. Lovecraft.

    As a test I put in a SW bit that came up James Joyce the first time but replaced "Mara" with "Hermione" and it gave me J.K. Rowling. Replacing "Mara" with "Harry" still gave me James Joyce. So it must use at least some key words for certain authors.
     
  13. darksideyesplease

    darksideyesplease Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2005
    Yeah, Harry is a common name. Hermione and Voldemort, not so much.
     
  14. NYCitygurl

    NYCitygurl Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2002

    If everyone else is getting that too, it must be a name trigger thing.
     
  15. Corellian_Ale

    Corellian_Ale Manager Emeritus star 4 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2008
    Raymond Chandler? Color me skeptical, I think that was more meant for you Face...
     
  16. Exeter

    Exeter Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2005
    It would be interesting to know exactly how the thing works.

    I took it for a spin and saw:

    Johnathan Swift
    Isaac Asimov
    James Joyce
    Robert Louis Stevenson
    H.P. Lovecraft
    Harry Harrison
    James Fenimore Cooper

    That's quite a wild grab bag of influences for Star Wars and I'm not sure I buy it, but I guess I could do worse.

    Thanks for the link, Face.
     
  17. Idrelle_Miocovani

    Idrelle_Miocovani Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 5, 2005
    It is a lot of fun to play with. Wheee! 8-}

    Just for kicks, I copied and pasted in the "To Be or not to be" soliloquy and it said, "I write like Mark Twain!" [face_laugh] It apparently took a long slice of Shakespeare (ie. an entire scene) to get it to say "I write like William Shakespeare!"
     
  18. The_Face

    The_Face Ex-Manager star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 22, 2003
    Interesting that there are apparently fandom-specific keywords in there. We'll dissect this robot yet.

    It's also fun to see which authors are possible outputs that I wasn't getting.

    I had a suspicion that might happen. When I tried putting in entire stories, I got Brown more than I did with just chapters or scenes. I think it has to do with straight-forward vocabulary choices, basic sentence length, and maybe a lot of dialogue?

    I wonder how spare you have to write before it gives you Hemingway.

    [face_laugh]

    For kicks, I put in the King James translation of the creation story and got "Kurt Vonnegut." [face_laugh]
     
  19. Idrelle_Miocovani

    Idrelle_Miocovani Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 5, 2005
    I had a suspicion that might happen. When I tried putting in entire stories, I got Brown more than I did with just chapters or scenes. I think it has to do with straight-forward vocabulary choices, basic sentence length, and maybe a lot of dialogue?

    That would be my guess, too. :) I usually try to write straight-to-the-point without too much embellishment while still being entertaining, so maybe that's being Dan Brown-ish.

    I just put in the entirety of This Time Around (note: 300,000 words will try to crash the system :p ) to see what it would do, and it told me James Joyce. The majority of the single chapters I put in from that fic gave me Dan Brown. [face_thinking]

    I wonder how spare you have to write before it gives you Hemingway.

    Considering how much angsting I did over word choice for that fic - a lot. 8-}



     
  20. DaenaBenjen42

    DaenaBenjen42 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 15, 2005
    I got... Stephen King (So They Met In A Bar), James Joyce (The Table Was Crowded), and George Orwell (a drabble). Interesting...
     
  21. moosemousse

    moosemousse CR Emeritus: FF-UK South star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2004
    I got JK Rowling for a piece of unposted fic. I'll have a proper look later as I'm busy today.
     
  22. Gabri_Jade

    Gabri_Jade Fanfic Archive Editor Emeritus star 5 VIP

    Registered:
    Nov 9, 2002
    I tried eight different stories, from comedy to satire to angst, and got James Joyce seven times and Stephen King once. James Joyce it is, I guess. Considering what I've heard about Ulysses (no, I haven't read it), I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. :p
     
  23. Ceillean

    Ceillean Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 13, 2001
    Dan Brown, Ian Fleming, James Joyce and Stephen King. :D

    Four different stories, for different authors.

     
  24. madman007

    madman007 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 2007
    Depending on the story, I entered three different ones.

    My current one Bad Blood resembles JK Rowling. Multi-millions, here I come!! [face_money_eyes]

    My non-SW fic from Jennifer's Body is like...Dan Brown??? [face_thinking] Well, that's depressing.

    And my other non-SW fic from Coraline closely like Kurt Vonnegut. Uh, huh...

    Fun, but has no true literary value.
     
  25. Idrelle_Miocovani

    Idrelle_Miocovani Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 5, 2005
    More proof that the tool uses keywords! To write like JK Rowling, you really, really only need use Harry Potter-related names. I took the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice (which the tool correct identifies as being written by Jane Austen), replaced all the names with Harry Potter names for characters and places and bingo, you get JKR.

    [face_laugh] [face_laugh]

    ... I'm having too much fun, aren't I? [face_batting] It's silly, but it's terribly amusing. :p
     
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