| It is an analyzer for writing style to tell you which famous author you have a similar writing style to... so I tried a couple of samples.
Here are my samples and my results:
This was my response on a fun forum to which I belong for the question, "Cake or Pie?"
I shall choose the noble cheesecake. You see, when this very same querulous question were put to those deciding what the traditional treat consumed for the anniversary of each person's passing from a parasitic to an autonomous existence and the decision was made, rather than leave the query to the decision of the celebrants or even the individual marking the milestone it was decided that it should now and forever be, "Cake," of course. This was accepted. Many centuries later, however, the quiet and unassuming cheesepie (as she was called in those days of yore) volunteered to give up her essence, indeed her core identity as pie and infiltrate the social order of cake to try and understand what exactly these more sinister pastries -- you must admit and allow that cakes are the more devious of the two classifications, and infinitely more prone to nefarious deeds, to collude or conspire -- were doing to so indomitably retain their hold on the masses engaging in jubilation for such an interminable long time. What she found horrified her. Aghast at her decision to never again be allowed to join her sisters (for pie are all female and cake are all male) and instead be required to endure always being referred to as the sissy little brother, what she discovered in her investigation drove her to the depths of despair. She accepted her fate for a long while, silently suffering and her original state of being forgotten even to the great meat pie mother that was older than all other pies. Cheesepie had been amongst the eldest of pies, beaten only by the meat pie and few others in age. Of course, cake had been around for eight centuries when meat pie came to be over 2,170 years ago (cheesepie having originated only decades after meat pie). It was not until the 14th century that cheesecake decided that she needed to shake off her depression and deliver her report, whether the pie elders recalled having sent her on her mission or not! it took her another four hundred years to make that report, and her former existence had by then been erased from history. The report itself was astounding -- cakes, while just as nefarious and downright deceptive as has always been thought, had no influence in the decision at all. People simply lacked the imagination to effect change and were bound by the tradition as had been long established. She had become inured to the tauntings of being called a sissy and a pouf, but in these new times a thought occurred to her... being a pouf meant that she would be expected to associate with the pies, as they were all the girls. She began to help in the fight for rights of those that were of the minority in terms of their gender identity and sexual preference -- after all, every LGBT{I(Q)} rally that I have ever seen has had present as one of the many snacks of choice... cheesecake. Success was immediate and now anything that is emotionally charged with a happy feeling is referred to as... cheesecake. So, join me, fellow Oddballs, in rejoicing in the rich and lustrously varied history of one of my heroines. The noble and nigh deified cheesecake as a choice in this divisive question of personal choice.
Author of Gulliver's Travels -- so pretty nifty! My second sample was:
This is a sample from the beginning of my story, Victoriana...
Methinks, then, that I awoke in but an instant at the sounding of the chimes, meant to rouse me from the arms of Morpheus and to call my return clarion from prowling the lands of Noddis Ca'raan. And then whilst most distractedly and in a spate of uffish thought, mine arm didst throw off of myself the winsome companions of my mattresses -- indeed of my bed itself -- both furred and shirred. They did not cry out, for I had not given them voice nor leave to make words.
To my feet I ... stumbled. Much as I would prefer to boldly state that I sprang immediately to stance, it was instead more of a churlish and unpatterned series of rollicking thumps upon my bedchamber carpets punctuated by the cracking of my spine.
But stumbled, I did. In my stupor, still valiantly efforting to throw off the influences of the King of Dream, I made my way to the chamber containing the mad device used to whisk away all of mine offal and waste.
Groggily, as I settled there bemoaning my utter lack of some of the delightfully arcane brew of the Ethiopians (the one that restores the potence and senses of all those with the proclivities toward glacial awakenings), the terrestrial stage coalesces into existence and envelops my being...
Author of Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -- so still spiffy!
I find it interesting that both authors I got as a result are Irish with other similarities such as when they were writing, as well!
Thought I'd share and let folks here join in the fun! |
Oh hell. Using text from my
Oh hell.
Using text from my latest, A Country Life I received this:
Stephenie Meyer
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
Then from Paradise of Fools, this:
Kurt Vonnegut
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
So if Kurt Vonnegut and Stephine Meyer had a baby, it would be me!
The weirdness never ceases.
~Lili
Blog: http://lilithlangtree.tglibrary.com/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/lilith_langtree
~Lili
Write the story that you most desperately want to read.
you wouldn't happen to be...
a time-travelling vampire, would you?
From my story Solitaire (minus the song lyrics :) )
William Gibson
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
on reflection...
I have to say, it is just the COOLEST thing that I even HAVE any writing to submit for analysis, and the BCTS community is the reason why.
*sigh*
I tried my most recent story:
A Dyslexic Orangutan
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
Consistent
From Heat Wave - I write like Margaret Mitchell
From Pop My Cork - I write like David Foster Wallace
From And 50 Cents for Your Soul - I write like David Foster Wallace
From Patton Pending - I write like David Foster Wallace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace
The romance like Mitchell - my little comic pieces like Wallace
Commentator
Visit my Caption Blog: Dawn's Girly Site
Visit my Amazon Page: D R Jehs
Ooh, me too!
From entering in the text of "Princess For Hire:"
David Foster Wallace
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
From the text of Echoes, I got James Joyce.
And, appropriately enough, the text of "The Corpse of Shelley Poe:"
Annie Rice
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
Melanie E.
Cory Doctorow?
I just fed it Green with Envy, and that's what I got. Now I need to look them up!
On the other hand, I tested 'Under Heaven, Over Hell', and I got...Frank L. Baum?!
That's just amazing!
EDIT: Apparently, my writing is a lot less consistent than I thought, this thing has told me that my writing style emulates Ann Rice, Mark Twain, and even Douglas Adams! Wild.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause-of-effect...but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly...timey-wimey...stuff.
You don't know Cory Doctorow?
I recommend Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, available for free here: http://craphound.com/down/
(It's published under a Creative Commons license, so it's a legal download, from his own site)
Thanks, I'll definitely check that out!
I wish I knew how this program works, it just told me my latest installment of 'Free Spirit' was written by Isaac Asimov?!
Very confusing.
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause-of-effect...but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly...timey-wimey...stuff.
Who am I?
Using "Never Trust the Pretty Ones," I write like Margaret Atwood.
Using "Ginger and Mr. Fogey," I write like Stephen King.
Using "Oscar Night," I write like Dan Brown.
Using "Ready? Okay!" I write like David Foster Wallace.
Using "While Sleeping Beautified," I write like Raymond Chandler.
So I appear to average out to a pulpy, mass-market mystery writer who deals with things on the edges of reality.
Best of all, the scifi story I wrote over at Stardust, "Morale Officer" says I write like Arthur Clarke.
(My magical fantasy there "Cat Fancier" comes up as William Gibson, so I missed the genre a little.)
Unfortunately...
...it's a scam.
The site apparently makes no effort to analyze anything.
This:
Yields: Daniel Defoe
This:
Yields: H. P. Lovecraft
This:
Ian Fleming
Perhaps on a very bad day...
The "Blog" is so obviously fake that it hardly deserves the name, since Mark Twain is apparently still blogging from beyond the grave. Boy, was he ever surprised!
The site used to advertise a sleazy vanity publisher with this text:
Since then, the blurb has been changed to advertise the "CodingRobots" diary software, the people who "designed" the software, probably because "i write like" + scam now yields well over a million hits.
Make your own I Write Like badge!
Just copy the text into your editor, Replace XXXXXXX with your preferred author, and you're golden, blessed by the irrefutable imprimatur of the Internet.
Note: I removed the spyware link from the code, as it originally passed your supposed author name to the "I Write Like" site, so your request to Amazon.com -- initiated by clicking on the author name -- was made through their site. There's no particular reason to do that sort of indirection, so I assume that they're up to no good.
If you'd like the link to go somewhere other than the top of the current page, you can replace the a href="#" with a href="http://whatever.com/" or any valid Web address.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Scam or not
It's still entertaining. Still has the vanity publisher ad too, I should add.
And the HP lovecraft thing actually makes a kind of sense when you think about it. Cthulu Ftahgn!
Melanie E.
True
ME!
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Okay, So Here It Is
According to the 'I Write Like' program, I am seriously Schizophrenic. Here are the results for some of my works;
Dance of the Baccha – Stephenie Meyer
The Legend of Alfildr – H. P. Lovecraft
The Gambit – Dan Brown
While the Band Played Waltzing Matilda – Stephen King
The World Turned Upside Down – James Joyce
Either I do not have a writing style, or I am a literary chameleon.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
I don't care what anyone may say
But I can and will share this observation:
This blog is full of hilarity!!! ^_^
Faraway
P.S. Hey Lynceus, guess what? My introductory blog from a year back yielded this:
Cory Doctorow
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
LOL
Does that make us the Two Cory's?
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause-of-effect...but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly...timey-wimey...stuff.
I Resemble that Remark
Okay, go ahead. Laugh.
She's not laughing at you.
Yes she is.
No she isn't. She's making an observation.
Say's who?
I do, I do.
Who asked you?
Could you do us all a favor and go back and sit in a corner of the subconscious where you belong.
No! I won't I won't I won't. So there.
If you don't shut up, I'll sic my muse on you.
Go ahead, I'm not afraid of your big, bad muse.
(Note to Reader: Being a literary Schizophrenic when it comes to your writing ain't easy.)
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
"I write like" explained
I put about sixty pieces of my writing into the thing and kept tables and this seems to be how it works.
It's really a simple decision tree:
Yes, everyone in the above list, except R.L. Stevenson (darn it) came up at least once as being someone I wrote like. Chuck Pahlaniuk came up six times. :)
If I'd only included a pirate talking about cheese in a story....
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Aw...Damn!
...Chuck Palahniuk came up about seven times for me, and here I thought it's because the software knew that I sometimes fight with invisible manifestations of my crazy personality!
James Joyce came up for The Quiet Girl and Mario Puzo for Un Breve Parentesi...now there's a real kick in the head. And here I was hoping for Mickey Spillane or Barbara Cartland.
She was born for all the wrong reasons
but grew up for all the right ones
Con grande amore e di affetto, Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
Creativity
Out of curiosity (like all the rest here, of course) I stuck in two pieces, one dialogue-driven and one of exposition. I apparently write like Stephen King and James Joyce, depending. I then stuck in a bit about riding around Wales, and surprise, surprise, Tolkien.
As part of my last degree I spent a long time on textual analysis, which isn't as dry and dull as it sounds, but is a very dense subject. One of my fun games was separating the two authors' contributions to"Good Omens" by Pratchett and Gaiman. To have a computer programme that can do that so quickly....as said above, bollocks.
I wonder how many fish they land?
Me too!
"The Genie", "Petra" and "Petra: I Will Survive" are apparently in the style of Cory Doctorow.
"Petra 2" (under construction) is in the style of Kurt Vonnegut.
"Goodbye Sam" - David Foster Wallace
"Multirhymes" - H.P. Lovecraft (I've so got to write a Whateley fanfic and try it out!)
"After the Fall" - Vladimir Nabokov
"Born in a Watery Grave" (not quite complete - you'll see it in the next few days) - Douglas Adams
Make of that what you will...
Then just for the hell of it, I fed it a few translations of Genesis 1...
NIV - Margaret Attwood
KJV - James Joyce
NCV - George Orwell
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
In the name of meaningless
In the name of meaningless fun, I got on my first attempt:
Mary Shelley
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
And was so pleased I didn't try any other story! Hollywood, I'm ready for the film adaptation of my story now please!
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Experiment
Out of curiousity last night I hunted up the Molly Bloom siloloquy from ULYSSES online and put it in there. The program thinks that James Joyce writes like James Joyce. Then I entered the first couple of pages of the Vonnegut fable HARRISON BERGERSON, and got YOU WRITE LIKE KURT VONNEGUT...
So the program isn't totally random, like some kind of digital Magic 8 Ball coughing up YES / NO / MAYBE. Would like to see what results I get with less famous passages by other, less distinctive authors (maybe changing the names and cities, in case it's recognizing these or something...) but I'm lazy and have other goals for my day. Hopefully I'll be writing like SOMEBODY today, instead of playing with this damn thing...
~~hugs (arsis longa, velveeta breakfast), Laika
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
I got a couple
of chuck Palaniuk hits for my stories, a couple of Anne Rice, and a Steven King. I had not been familiar with Palaniuk before, so I wiki'ed him, I am flattered, I think.
How it really works...
Taking a link trawl around the author's site, I eventually dug up an interview where he explains the algorithm:
And what's a Bayesian classifier? You could try Wikipedia, but that article may leave you more confused than before. And here's WP's description of Bayesian spam filters.
So at a rough guess, when fed the training data, it looks for words (probably frequently occurring words more than x letters long), the standard readability statistics (e.g. words per sentence, characters per word), punctuation usage and probably a whole crop of filters to determine the usage of reported speech. It presumably assigns a score to each parameter it's been told to look at and stores them in a database.
When it analyses your text, it generates the same set of statistics before doing a lookup and spitting out the author who's the closest match.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!