Sunday, July 18, 2010

Rolling my eyes at the "I write like..." meme

Okay: first up I put in the review I wrote for Maureen Carter's "Death Line".

Turns out I write like Edgar Allan Poe.

Then I put in my review for the recent Doctor Who season finale.

Turns out I write like David Foster Wallace.

Then I tried my review for 'The Silence'.

Seems I'm H.P. Lovecraft.

I tried my piece on reading and not reading.

I'm actually Cory Doctorow.

If I put in the Big Session 2010 review...

I'm back to being H.P. Lovecraft again.

So here's the thing:

How many famous authors is it actually drawing on to be able to 'define' writing styles? There is a nice critique at Tea Berry-Blue which neatly quizzes the 'analyzer' with extracts from a variety of authors - including a range of female writers.

Who'd have thought? Turns out they mostly write like white male authors.

An interesting exercise, but perhaps not one to take too seriously.

2 comments:

Persephone said...

See, this is why I've given up on those quizzes on Facebook. They're like this, remarkably unrevelatory, and rather reminiscent of the "personalized" recommendation at Amazon (which seems to think I like all horror films because I once ordered a DVD of the 1963 version of The Haunting). My results were remarkably similiar to yours; I chose random entries from early blog posts, recent ones, and those from about a year ago. Rubbish.

JoeinVegas said...

Hmm, have you looked in a mirror recently and found out who you really are?