Here’s a fun wee diversion: a writing analyser that takes your text and tells you which famous writer you write like. I got Douglas Adams, although it seems that if you put in any kind of tech journalism whatsoever it tells you you write like Cory Doctorow.
I got Isaac Asimov. That’ll do.
I tried to fool it by pasting in some Dickens, but it was wise to such shenanigans.
I’m not happy… it said Harry Redknapp :(
No seriously – it actually said George Orwell… I’ll take your Asimov & Adams and raise you :)
Gertrude Stein. Further comment would be superfluous.
The (prototype) front page of my website is in the style of… H.P. Lovecraft.
I thought it was more commas and footnotes than unnameable horror and diabolical Eskimos.
Wow, getting Lovecraft is a real achievement. I’m scared to ask what your site’s about now :)
Mark Twain.
Mark mo’fn Twain y’all. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Dammit! Owned!
> getting Lovecraft is a real achievement.
Well, we’re writers for video games so it’s credible, but as we’re called Mostly Harmless I was expecting something… different.
Hang on, perhaps it’s all those ellipses.
Hmmm, just had a wander around the site and I agree, it’s more Adams than Lovecraft :)
Load of shite. Accused me of writing like Dan Brown. Dan Brown!
Actually seems pretty random. I tried another few paragraphs from my book and got HP Lovecraft. A third attempt resulted in Oscar Wilde.
Blurb for your book: “Writes like the deranged lovechild of Oscar Wilde, H P Lovecraft, and Dan Brown.” I would buy that, just out of sheer horrified curiosity.
Heh! Just might do that…
I got David Foster Wallace.
I don’t even know who he is
Rutty, it’s high praise indeed. DFW was one of the best-loved novelists of recent memory, based largely on one book, Infinite Jest.
He was also a bloody great journalist: this piece on cruise ships is great (PDF):
http://www.harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf
I’ll have a read of that, thanks :)
Hmm, I got Lovecraft too…the text was something I wrote for school^^” (about Adams btw)