I’d come across this a while ago, but I’d forgotten all about it until Jack McDonald (of Abraham Werewolf, and also of our 90s cover band, the Doc-Ock Martens*) brought it to my attention again earlier today.
I Write Like: Check what famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them to those of the famous writers.
It’s an interesting idea, but I am quite frustrated by the lack of transparency here. I want to know what their list of writers is! (Ones I know are in there include Austen, Poe, Vonnegut, Palahniuk, Atwood, Nabokov, Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Wilde.) And I want to know how it “works”. I put in a poem I had written while in Russia that refers to Nabokov directly, and of course he popped up, but is it because of the direct reference, or because of the style, or the references to Russia and butterflies? I don’t know. I also don’t know how useful it is, but it is certainly a fun thing to play around with, especially in noticing stylistic differences between different pieces of my own writing.
* The Doc-Ock Martens are making a comeback, so any suggestions of 90s jams we might want to cover are totally welcome.
