# I Write Like



## David Gordon Burke (Oct 9, 2013)

Who knows how legit this tool is but....in case you have an inclination to try it just search I Write Like.
Copy and paste your text into the page.  Click.
You get an analysis of your text that will tell you which writer your work resembles.
My result on various different paragraphs was a cross between Dan Brown and H.G. Wells.  

David Gordon Burke


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## Bloggsworth (Oct 9, 2013)

I put in 2 short stories and the beginnings of a novel; the short stories came back as Stephanie Meyer and Stephen King and the novel segment as David Foster Wallace; interestingly two of them are dead and one writes about the dead; I have read work by none of them, though I had heard of the first two.


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## Gamer_2k4 (Oct 9, 2013)

I got Kurt Vonnegut for a couple of my chapters.  I was hoping for C. S. Lewis...


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## Novel (Oct 9, 2013)

I also got Kurt Vonnegut. I've never even heard of him before now, surprisingly.


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## David Gordon Burke (Oct 9, 2013)

I just read "Slaughterhouse five" by Kurt Vonnegut.  Really twisted.  
I liked it.  I had tried to read it as a child but it was a little advanced.  

David Gordon Burke


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## Bloggsworth (Oct 9, 2013)

Novel said:


> I also got Kurt Vonnegut. I've never even heard of him before now, surprisingly.



What!


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## Jeko (Oct 9, 2013)

By writing, 'fudge fudge fudge fudge fudge!' with each word as its own paragraph, I got Vladamir Nabokov.

Right.

Also, writing absolute gibberish gives me Dan Brown.


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## Gamer_2k4 (Oct 9, 2013)

Has anyone tried pasting excerpts from actual books by these authors (like _The Da Vinci Code_ or _Slaughterhouse Five_) and seeing who the algorithm thinks wrote them?


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## Kevin (Oct 9, 2013)

> I also got Kurt Vonnegut. I've never even heard of him before now, surprisingly.



Little Rock:
Who's Bill Murray? 


Tallahassee:
...I've never hit a kid before... I mean, that's like asking who Gandhi is. 


Little Rock:
Who's Gandhi?


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## The Tourist (Oct 9, 2013)

I write like Anne Rice.

I don't know whether to be insulted, or take it as a warning and sleep with garlic.

Edit:  Just to test the theory, I took another sample and submitted it.  It came up "David Foster Wallace."


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## popsprocket (Oct 9, 2013)

I've had a number of different answers, but they come up pretty consistently whenever playing with this tool.

Most common are Shakespeare (is that an insult in the modern literature world?), Cory Doctorow, and J.D. Salinger.


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## tepelus (Oct 9, 2013)

I got Ray Bradbury for my latest WIP, which is still in first draft and has a long way to go before it's finished mode.


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## Sunny (Oct 9, 2013)

It told me I was totally original and I was on track to have the best seller! Wahoo!!


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## bookmasta (Oct 9, 2013)

It told me I wright like H.P. Lovecraft for the majority, with a little of Dan Brown depending on what I put in.


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## Gargh (Oct 9, 2013)

Hmm, well, apparently I write like Chuck Palahniuk!!! Who?! The best I can say (for all you Mary Whitehouse Experience fans out there... c'mon I know there are loads) is 'I am aware of his work'.

That result may have more to do with the fact that what I put in was my one and only piece of present tense second person POV though.


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## Jamie (Oct 10, 2013)

Robert Louis Stevenson.


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## Bloggsworth (Oct 10, 2013)

I put in the first chapter of Oliver Twist and it told me it was like Dickens...


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## David Gordon Burke (Oct 11, 2013)

Cadence said:


> By writing, 'fudge fudge fudge fudge fudge!' with each word as its own paragraph, I got Vladamir Nabokov.
> 
> Right.
> 
> Also, writing absolute gibberish gives me Dan Brown.



I don't understand the point of your post.
Were you trying to validate the I write like site or discredit it?  
I've read Dan Brown.  
Fudge.  


D.G.B.


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## ChooWhee (Oct 11, 2013)

Overall I write like Jonathan Swift, one separate part came up in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle and in another alternate story I write like Mary Shelley. Make of that what you will.

Another part came up as James Joyce, interesting stuff, definitely makes you want to know more about the writers whose work you don't know so well.


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## Pluralized (Oct 11, 2013)

I got Cory Doctorow and Margaret Atwood. 

When I posted up _*this story*_, I got Rudyard Kipling. I am taking that as some kind of good sign....


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## Jeko (Oct 12, 2013)

> I don't understand the point of your post.
> Were you trying to validate the I write like site or discredit it?



The site has been posted three times on this forum now, I think. The last time it came up I had the same attitude. Why should I want to know I write like Dan Brown if I obviously don't? If I went to Dan Brown and showed him my writing and said I wrote like him, he'd laugh and say that I don't.

The site relies on a pretty wonky algorithm; it matches what you put in to a bank of extracts from writers (hence putting in the first chapter of HP gives you J K Rowling) evaluating word choice, syntax and the like. But the bank seems weirdly limited; it says that John Steinbeck writes like David Foster Wallace, Stephen King, James Joyce, J R R Tolkein, L Frank Baum, but not John Steinbeck. 

I don't find it useful, and I don't find it entertaining either. I write like me. That's the only person I ever want to write like.


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## WechtleinUns (Oct 12, 2013)

So, apparently, my fiction is written like James Joyce. My poetry is written like Oscar Wilde. And my non-fiction is written like H.P. Lovecraft.

...I think I broke it. 

:Edit:

All joking aside, the overall concept of design is good, but the algorithm itself appears to be poorly implemented. The result is that the application is forced to condense a huge range of styles into a, comparatively speaking, much more limited set of literary figures.

It also appears that there are some "authors" that are set on as default choices for certain extremes. In particular, overly ornate and elaborate prose seems to default to H.P. Lovecraft. Although the statistical analysis isn't proper.

Meh.


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## escorial (Oct 12, 2013)

click what?...


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## Pluralized (Oct 12, 2013)

*Click this! *


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## escorial (Oct 12, 2013)

Ha..that's a big click Pluralized..I got Chuck Palahuick..never read or knew of him...googled and he wrote Fight Club!!!!


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## eggo (Oct 12, 2013)

I got Cory Doctorow as well, Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Clarke. 

I wrote, " global warming is real" and it said Man, Bear Pig.......


Who is this guy?


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## J Anfinson (Oct 12, 2013)

I pasted about a thousand words in and got Stephen King. I'll take it as a compliment, even if it is bunk.


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## tabasco5 (Oct 16, 2013)

This tool is completely legit.  To test it, I copied a list of the most commonly used cliches and inserted it into the tool.  The result was that it said I write like JK Rowling.  Spot on.


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## Tettsuo (Oct 25, 2013)

I got Vladimir Nabokov.  Now I have read his work!


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## Sjonak (Nov 15, 2013)

I put in the first paragraph of one of my novels and got H.P. Lovecraft. I've never read him, but I believe there could be worse results. Pretty entertaining tool. I'll definitely be asking others to do this. Thanks for sharing!


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## Jeko (Nov 15, 2013)

Okay, maybe there is a use for it - you may randomly stumble upon an author you should read. That's as much credit as I'll give it.


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## spartan928 (Nov 19, 2013)

Kurt Vonnegut! Woo Hoo, Yippeee, Yowza, Woop woop, Yeehaw!

Wait, hold on. Another snippet was Dan Brown....pshaw, phooey, ewww.

I Write Like, you are such a fickle ego booster.


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## Schrody (Nov 23, 2013)

I got Arthur Clarke :tennis:


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## CorporateTool (Dec 18, 2013)

I got Stephanie Meyer, William Gibson, and Kurt Vonnegut... one of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong.


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## stormageddon (Mar 1, 2014)

Supposedly I write like Mary Shelley, which is interesting as I have been studying Frankenstein this year


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## Terry D (Mar 4, 2014)

Apparently Stephen King doesn't write like Stephen King. I just dropped the first few pages of The Stand into I Write Like and it told me he writes like Margret Mitchell.


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## Gavrushka (Mar 4, 2014)

Terry D said:


> Apparently Stephen King doesn't write like Stephen King. I just dropped the first few pages of The Stand into I Write Like and it told me he writes like Margret Mitchell.



Which one of us is going to volunteer to break it to him? I doubt he'll take it well...


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## ViKtoricus (Mar 5, 2014)

Mine says I write like Jonathan Swift.

Who is he?


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## commanderjets (Mar 5, 2014)

i write like myself, I don't really know anyone who writes this bad! XD


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## ViKtoricus (Mar 5, 2014)

CorporateTool said:


> I got Stephanie Meyer, William Gibson, and Kurt Vonnegut... one of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong.



I'll try this...

If Stephanie and William are not satire writers, then the answer to your challenge is...

Kurt Vonnegut.


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## Schrody (Mar 5, 2014)

ViKtoricus said:


> Mine says I write like Jonathan Swift.
> 
> Who is he?



Gulliver's Travels


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## commanderjets (Mar 5, 2014)

well, i apparently write like Douglas Adams...

- - - Updated - - -

I have no clue who he is, does anyone else?


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## commanderjets (Mar 5, 2014)

ohhhh, he he, he wrote hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, lawl!


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## T.S.Bowman (Mar 6, 2014)

Well...the first chapter (short chapter) I put in says that I write like James Joyce.

Second one says Chuck Palahniuk.

*shrug*


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## Riptide (Mar 7, 2014)

J.D Salinger


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## spartan928 (Mar 10, 2014)

commanderjets said:


> well, i apparently write like Douglas Adams...
> 
> - - - Updated - - -
> 
> I have no clue who he is, does anyone else?




Yeah, gotta read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It's a great book.


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## N J Xkey (Mar 18, 2014)

Tried 3 different sections
First one - Poe (Cool, I'll take that)
Second one - H.P Lovecraft (yeah, still pretty happy)
Third one - Dan Brown (Shut the tab in a huff and dismissed it all as nonsense ;P )


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## Plasticweld (Apr 5, 2014)

Robert Louis Stevenson up twice I submitted two different stories.  I have read a number of his books but don't think I ever would have copied his style.  I was hoping for Ken Kesey or Hemmingway I guess I will have to keep working


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## tepelus (Apr 5, 2014)

Four out of five of my chapters (that I entered) in my WIP came back Ray Bradbury, the other one Chuck Palahniuk. My selkie flash fiction also resulted in Chuck P.


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## Ari (Apr 6, 2014)

Ian Flemming 

@_@

I do NOT!


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## kilroy214 (Apr 20, 2014)

I tried 3 different writing pieces and I got:

JK Rowling - 
James Joyce - 
Stephen King - hmmm

Not sure what to make of this.


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## Greimour (Apr 21, 2014)

Am I missing something, what link am I supposed to click to put my excerpt in to?

I typed: "I write like" in google and got iwl.me  ... is that the right place?

Anyway:




hmm... is that good? Or will I just end up being a 'Tolkien knock off' writer? >.<


Edit:::

I done multiple excerpts of Tolkien - they all came back as tolkien... except this one:


> Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first _éored_ roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Oromë the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young. His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like an image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed. For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and the darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.



Surprisingly, that came back as Dan Brown. In fairness, it wasn't much of Tolkien to draw the comparison... but I felt that it was enough for a person to make the connection so the program should have too. -.-''


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## skitty (Apr 21, 2014)

I write like me. I try not to write like anyone.


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