I write like...

This website interests me and makes me laugh.
It is called "I write like..." and the concept is that you paste a segment of text that you have written and it spits out the author your writing style is most smiliar too, based on... something? I don't really know what exactly. Examples that I have found from pasting random samples from this blog include H.P Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, James Fenimore Cooper (who I haven't heard of), David Foster Wallace (who I also haven't heard of, but sounds interesting, and according to his bio he commited suicide so at least he won't have any ongoing sagas...).

In my opinion, there are multiple reasons that this is cool.

1. I find the concept of influence really interesting (as you might be able to tell from past posts on the subject which by the way was written in the style of J.D. Salinger (an author I am embarressed to admit I have been intending to read for years but have just never ended up picking up...)).
2. It is nice to think that your writing style is in some way like a famous author (excuse me while I rush out to make a book deal).
3. It is a great way to discover authors I might be interested in reading (assuming I am interested in reading styles that are similar to my own).
4. It is an interesting way to spend a little time while searching for some inspiration (and has actually turned out to be some inspiration in and of itself).
5. I can see this working as a party theme (bring a segment of writing, plug into the generator, and that is your drinking name for the night; plug a segment of writing into the generator and come to the party as that person, we all have to guess etc).
6. I want to see if it is possible to put in a segment of writing that isn't "like" anyone (p.s. my money says it isn't).
7. I want to see if I have written anything like an author I know well enough to recognise so that I can compare.
8. It is entertaining (when it pops up Douglas Adams and you think "Oh hey, I like him, cool, go me", when you watch in fear of it popping up an author you don't like, like Marian Keys or a Bronte, when it pops up Charles Dickens and you think to yourself "Oh go no, please be based on Oliver Twist and not on Great Expectations"). This is something you can get together and laugh about with friends if you and your friends have the sort of crazy, over-educated, heavily literaturely influenced brains that would find this funny (ie. like me).
9. I don't know how it works which makes it interesting to me; I want to know if there is a difference in style between my stream of conciousness, my random blog posts, my content heavy blog posts, my emotion heavy blog posts, my story writing; I want to know if I can work out what makes it think any given segment is in a persons style, what are the parameters?
10. Finally, because it makes you think about style, which is something that good writers have, and yet isn't something that we generally think about... and I think being able to manipulate your style is important but it is also important to be able to be consistant, particularly if you have commercial aspirations. After all, part of the reason for buying Terry Prachett is you know that you will get a book you enjoy reading - you might like the characters, the progression, the plot, but in the end you go back to him because of his style... the way he writes is as important as (if not more important than) what he writes about. And so having a style, being consistant, that is something that can be improved on. Obviously, I am not thinking of writing commercially with any seriousness. As nice as it would be to make money from doing something that I A) enjoy and B) do anyway, I would have to conquer that enormous stumbbling block of letting other people read things that I have written... not to mention the distance my writting has to go before it could be generally considered commercially.

Style. It's not something to take too seriously, but it is something I am thinking about. And it is also fun, which is also awesome. Also, there aren't many authors I really dislike, I am an omnivorous and gluttonous reader. Great expectations is the only book I have ever given up on (I was reading four other things at the time, and I just couldn't be bothered with it and never went back to it... the bookmark is still in, I could yet go back...). Jane Eyre is the book I most hated and part of that was that it isn't a good genre for me anyway and part of that was over hype (I had a friend who LOVED it and raved about it) and partly it is because it is awful, the characters are horrible and the plot is worse (in my humble opinion...). And both of those books the issue was only part style, partly the problem was content. So there aren't many "bad results" as far as I am concerned, I can't think of a result that would seriously offend me. Maybe if it said my style was Mills and Boons I might have a wee cry? So potentially avoid if you are easily offended?

This post was brought to you in the style of Dan Brown (I assume a la the DaVinci Code, but there are surely other Dan Browns out there) apparently. I have read, but not thought terribly hard about, Dan Brown's books about 4 years ago... I know that he writes in the first person, and I think I remember a fairly conversational tone. Maybe not much imagry? Maybe he makes a lot of lists? I might have to re-read him just to work out what that result means.