Friday, July 16, 2010

Who Do You Write Like?

Or is that Whom do you write like? 

Paste a sample of your writing into the box here: iwl.me/b/d7939cdb

and it will tell you which other writer your text resembles. 

I tried out the opening scene from IN THE LION'S MOUTH

The winds whistling o’er the breasts of the Dōngodair Hills carry much of the loneliness that can be found in those remote peaks and scatter it like pollen across the eastern plains, so that the Beastie boys, and the Nolan Beasts they tend, suck it in with every breath, and even the bluestem and inching grass, and the rip-gut in the wet bottomlands whose leaves are serrated knives soak up despair like sunshine and release it to the breeze.  Thus it is that the rustle of the tallgrass can wring a sigh from a strong man and drive a lonely woman to weeping. .............

and was told I write like someone named David Foster Wallace.  I prefer to think he writes like me.  He wrote a book titled Brief Interviews with Hideous Men which is a title that I would have loved to have thought of for myself.

Let me try another section of the book.

A juggler came up beside Donovan, entertaining the people lining the bridge.  When Donovan tossed a token at the crowd, the juggler nimbly snatched it from the air and added it to the balls he kept constantly whirling, to the applause of everyone, including Donovan himself. .................
OMG.  Now I write like James Joyce!  Forsooth!
 
 
Once more, from the most recent chapter.

The search took him to a part of town that the touristas would have shunned, had there been any tourists desperate enough to visit Ketchrum.  Construction standards across the Confederation were unimaginative but solid; yet even plasteel and metaloceramic could take on a bedraggled appearance when too little attention was paid to upkeep and maintenance.  ...........
Interesting.  I'm back to being Wallace. 

OK.  Let's try one of the poetic passages... 

"Sing, O harper, the anger of Donovan buigh..." 

Hmm.  James Joyce again.  At least I'm consistent.  Let me do one more...

Later, as the friends and enemies of the slain and injured carried out their useful duties, Ravn Olafsdottr and two of Oschous’ magpies turned over a teardrop body that had fallen from the rafters when a “mourning star” had found his throat.  The Ravn noted that the cruelty of the Fates had handed her the corpse of Magpie Three Sèanmazy.  She paused in her labor and stared at his contorted face.  No words formed, not even in her mind.  So surprised he seemed.  He could not credit what had happened to him even as it happened.  She bent and closed his eyes for him. .......
Hmm

Now I'm Chuck Palahniuk.  Fight Club.  Hmm, indeed.  That was a sort of fight club chapter. 

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