META: Who do you write like?

[Arthur Spitzer]

Here's a link to something that analyzes your writings and finds what
famous writer your work resembles...

http://iwl.me/

I tried a number of my stories... and this is what I got...

Eggplant #4 -- Margaret Atwood

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood

Guttertrash #25 -- I did two parts and got these two: Margaret Mitchell
and James Fenimore Cooper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mitchell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fenimore_Cooper

Girls on Beach Blankets #4 -- Raymond Chandler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler

Beige Midnight #2 -- Dan Brown

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Brown

Cauliflower #1 -- Cory Doctorow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow

Tales from the Gutterground #2 -- David Foster Wallace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace

Jong #2 -- more Cory Doctorow

Beige Countdown #0 -- more David Foster Wallace

On the Deadbeat #3 -- more Raymond Chandler

Haven't read any of those Authors except for Chandler and some blogs
from Doctorow...

Arthur "Wasting time..." Spitzer

[Russ Allbery]

Arthur Spitzer <arsp...@earthlink.net> writes:

> Here's a link to something that analyzes your writings and finds what
> famous writer your work resembles...

> http://iwl.me/

This unfortunately appears to be way less sophisticated than one might
hope based on the idea. There seem to be only about 15-20 authors
possible for it to return, and it routinely gets works by those same
authors wrong.

Lots of people were hoping it was going to do more advanced textual
analysis, but it appears to be some sort of simple-minded statistical
vocabulary matching. (It was also, at least for a time, advertising
ripoff "self-publishing" schemes to aspiring writers, but it's not clear
if that was actually the point of the site or just an ad rotation.)

--
Russ Allbery (ea...@eyrie.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

[Saxon Brenton]

Eagle (ea...@eyrie.org) cast a critical eye and noted:

Yes. I was a bit disappointed when I played with it for a bit and
discovered that it would tell me who it thought I wrote like without
explaining how it came to that conclusion.

For what it's worth, here's the results of a small sample of some of my
more recent (within the past half decade) stuff:

Limp-Asparagus Lad #55 (the September 11 story)
Cory Doctorow

Limp-Asparagus Lad #56 'Decimation part 1' (the start of the Ape Month 3 parter)
Stephenie Meyer

Limp-Asparagus Lad #58 'Decimation part 3' (the very late finale of the Ape Month 3 parter)
David Wallace Foster

My Father's Son #1
David Wallace Foster

Legion of Net.Heroes vol.2 #33 'Gathering Dust' (the anachronid story for the 5th High Concept Challenge)
Arthur C. Clarke

---
Saxon Brenton
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[Tom Russell]

Yeah, I got Joyce a lot, much to my chagrin.

==Tom

[Andrew Perron]

I seem to be getting mainly David Foster Wallace, but there's also some Ian
Fleming, Arthur C.Clarke, and H.P. Lovecraft. (Though not, ironically, in
my Cthulhu story.)

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, vocabulicious!

[Scott Eiler]

On Jul 19, 2:44 pm, Andrew Perron <pwer...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I seem to be getting mainly David Foster Wallace, but there's also some Ian
> Fleming, Arthur C.Clarke, and H.P. Lovecraft. (Though not, ironically, in
> my Cthulhu story.)

I got Kurt Vonnegut for my sample fiction, and the writer of "Fight
Club" for my web log.