Jumping on the "I Write Like" bandwagon · 1:59pm Feb 10th, 2015
Because somebody else did it and I have no creativity whatsoever.
So there's this website called I Write Like which attempts to compare you to published authors based on your style, word choice, etc. Pretty silly fluff, but whatever. Time to run some stuff through and see who I'm unconsciously ripping off.
A Taste of Meat - Arthur Clarke
A Shimmering Sunset - Vladimir Nabokov
Waning Moon - J. K. Rowling
A Chance Encounter (my contributions only) - J. R. R. Tolkien
Of Hearts and Hooves - Neil Gaiman
Eye of the Hurricane - David Foster Wallace
And That's Terrible - J. R. R. Tolkien
Bringing Up Blueblood - Raymond Chandler
Well, I have to say, it's been interesting so far. Some strange results, but not too bad. Now let's try my first two stories...
Keeping Your Hooves on the Ground - Dan Brown
...Okay...
My Little Alicorn - Dan Brown
...
I must sadly withdraw from the writing world forever. There are already too many Dan Browns.
Lol maybe you can try to go more Tolkien instead?
I need to run my stuff through when I get home!
Apparently I write like a mix of Anne Rice and Isaac Asimov.
So I'm guessing I secretly write about gay robots.
Dont feel too bad, my results said "Garbage".
Hmmm...
"Arthur C. Clarke" for one story, "Stephen King" (Never read any of his stuff) for another, "Oscar Wilde" for a third...
I wonder if the thing just "analyzes" by picking out specific words? Because on that third story just a few paragraphs down the line my sample said I wrote like "Dan Brown". I think it's more BS than anything.
So don't worry, it means NOTHINNNNK!
Personally I would ignore stuff like that.
I like Dan Brown, but yeah one is more than enough and I really dislike Langdon...
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Yay, I'm not actually as bad as Dan Brown!
But that also invalidates any good feelings from the others...
Why can't gimmicky Internet things give me a break?
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Because gimmicky Internet things are gimmicky. Also Internet things. Neither of which are good sources of self-esteem or sensible thought.
Don't take it too hard, at least it wasn't Dan Brown across the board.
I liked Angels and Demons...but then I realized that all his books are Angels and Demons
Hmm, let's use the as-yet-unpublished first chapter of Great Dragon Coronation...Ursula K. Le Guin.
I don't know how to feel about this, as I haven't ready any of her stuff. Hmm...
Return of Tambelon - J. R. R. Tolkien (weird, I was going for Robert E. Howard)
Boast Busted - Ian Flemming (what?!)
Family Matters - James Joyce (oh God nooooo...!)
An Early Reunion - Arthur Clarke
I'm beginning to feel that this is essentially random. Let's see what happens if I plug in Howard's The Phoenix on the Sword (the first Conan story) into this...Anne Rice. Plug in the first chapter of The Hobbit...oh, good, it does produce Tolkien as a result. Still. Weird.
Jeez, everybody's getting Arthur Clarke. Suddenly I don't feel so special.
Don't worry about it. That site is about as accurate as a roulette table, personally. Here's a fun game which you can try (and I did): Put another author in, or better yet,. something fairly unknown an author has written, and watch the site pump out "Arthur Clarke" or "Dan Brown" once again. It's pretty obvious that its actual selection of authors is pretty flimsy, and it's grouping submissions based on certain key words. Grab a modern fantasy excerpt from someone like RA Salvatore or Brooks and put them into the machine, and it's completely confused (apparently, Salvatore is just like J.K. Rowling ... except he is very much not).
Better yet, grab an excerpt from an author that it keeps spitting out, like Dan Brown. Grab a paragraph that mentions a main character's name from one Brown's books and hey! Presto! It says Dan Brown. Grab a much larger chunk however and ...
Oh dear, it says Dan Brown is James Joyce.
The thing clearly has a weak association of about twenty names based off of keyword indicators. Don't put any serious weight on it, as a well-read high-schooler could probably do a better job of analyzing someone's writing style.
I tried to check my fics, but apparently they were so bad the whole site went down.
Shit! I write like Dan Brown too! I don't even care about the Da Vinci Code, damn it!
Damn, what's with everyone just finding out about this website? I remember people using this back in the first days of the fandom to judge /co/ clop authors.
Hey now! That just means you kept getting better!
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I think that is actually exactly how it works.
I got Dan Brown for the first chapter of 'The Elements of Harmony and the Savior of Worlds'. If I had read anything by him that would mean something.
2785569 NARF!
Raindrops of Clan Drops, Barbarian Queen brings out 'Dan Brown'
And Secret of Andalantis comes out sounding like Ian Fleming...same with File Under "I" for Impossible... at least the first chapter of each...hmm...
So out of curiosity I looked into the background of this algorithm, and apparently it is pretty much useless in it's current form. I mean, it has potential, but the creator didn't give it a large enough sample size to make accurate predictions. As it stands currently even works from authors cited by the website yield completely different results. Fun to play around with for a few minutes, but I don't see any indication that the creator is still working on it.
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Now you got me curious.
Where did you get that information from?
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The Q&A Session with the creator
TL;DR It's a Bayesian Classifier, it's not open source because reasons. So if it is a Bayesian Classifier then just feeding it more literature might help its accuracy, but if it's a fake, we have no way of knowing.
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The really crazy thing is that despite, my own writing seeming to testing out pretty consistently as Ian Fleming in Griffin Over the Line, Broken Tiara, and Two Many Carrot Tops... my Lost Tales webisode for Boast Busted is apparently instead comparable to H.P. Lovecraft.
Edit: Adding the first six chapters of Elements of Insanity I get a much more random mix for each. Though given that I was actually trying to be somewhat distinct in the presentation of each, that's somewhat pleasing... though I can't really comment on the individual matches.
EoI:Ch1 "Twilight" -- Dan Brown
EoI:Ch2 "Silverstar" -- Neil Gaiman
EoI:Ch3 "Clover Charms" -- George Orwell
EoI:Ch4 "Snowflake" -- Chuck Palahniuk
EoI:Ch5 "Loosy Screws"-- J. R. R. Tolkien
EoI:Ch6 "Lemon Hearts" -- Jack London
When taken as a whole, however, those six chapters test out as Dan Brown. So I do wonder if the site actually analyzes the entire text, or just the first X words.
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He's the guy who wrote Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, Digital Fortress, Inferno, and a number of other books. The short summation is that he really only ever wrote one book, Angels and Demons, and most of his books since that one have read more-or-less just like it.
There's actually nothing particularly wrong with Angels and Demons itself, I certainly enjoyed it; it just means that once you start reading his later stuff it feels very repetitive. Regardless, I do recommend giving Angels and Demons a try. Also watch the movie, it was pretty good.
True story: I was thinking of Youtube Dan Brown, not "Da Vinci Code" Dan Brown.
I had it analyze the first chapter of my rewrite of Absent, and it said I write like J.K. Rowling. I submitted the same text again, and it said I write like Dan Brown. I think it has a database of popular authors' names, and it randomly picks one, regardless of what you submit.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to give myself thirty lashes for even being randomly compared to Dan Brown.
it could be worse, it could be Stephanie Meyer