Apparently, I write like Dan Brown. Commence mockery.

[chiasaur11]

So, in my browsing of blogs belonging to Canadian law students, I ran into a nifty little toy.

Analyses your writing in terms of authors. So, if you write overly descriptive, you get Lovecraft, write stream of consciousness you get Joyce, write badly, you get James Fenimore Cooper.

Fun little toy. Not necessarily dead on, but...

It's here.

(http://iwl.me/)

Should occupy a dull afternoon.

[Dragor]

I inserted my notes for a D&D quest, since I just got my new computer. I ALSO write like Dan Brown. Huh. Please don't start flinging rotten tomatoes.

[kpenguin]

I inputted various posts from my blog. Every single post got a different writer.

[Eldan]

That's an automated tool, yes?

How is it supposed to know that?

[Erts]

I apparently write like Stephen King. I'm not sure if that is a good or bad thing. Either I lack originality, or I write like one of my favorite authors.

[Innis Cabal]

I got Oscar Wilde, not sure what that means

[mangosta71]

Oscar Wilde is awesome.

[Erts]

I'm beginning to wonder how many authors are there that it can say you write like.

[Eldan]

Hehe.

The Lorem Ipsum (http://www.inrebus.com/loremipsum.php) generator?

It writes like James Joyce.

This random nonsense I typed:
Plomgobble ghargarlda Robodum quirkel zwotofrlork yospodird oakarkal zogothransif melkeget zip zongo sal. Yorkeltorkel mimil ssharva tugulmu jark.

That's Stephen King.

[Dallas-Dakota]

J.K. Rowling, James Joyce, Dan Brown, Margaret Atwood and on it goes, each time a different result.
Even texts written straight after eachother, just for different stories.

[Poison_Fish]

I note that most of my work changes depending on just what it is. An ethnography of mine is more like King, while my deeper analysis of trade and politics is like Dan Brown.

[Grumman]

Putting in a couple of paragraphs from a story I've been writing on-and-off for a while, it says I write like Robert Louis Stevenson.

Putting in a couple of paragraphs from another story also said I write like Robert Louis Stevenson.

Now to find out who Robert Louis Stevenson is.

EDIT: Apparently he's the guy that wrote Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

[chiasaur11]

I'm beginning to wonder how many authors are there that it can say you write like.

At least a dozen. Probably more.

Got a couple of guys for one bit I wrote in an odd style and nothing else even gets a mention of them.

And upon further testing:

1) My Wodehouse pastiche gets Wodehouse. So that's good.

2) A lot of my stuff gets Dan Brown. Less good.

(Robert Louis Stephenson wrote Treasure Island and a bunch of other adventure stories. He's no bad.)

[Eldan]

Putting in a couple of paragraphs from a story I've been writing on-and-off for a while, it says I write like Robert Louis Stevenson.

Putting in a couple of paragraphs from another story also said I write like Robert Louis Stevenson.

Now to find out who Robert Louis Stevenson is.

EDIT: Apparently he's the guy that wrote Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Shame on you. Eternal, eternal shame.

[Optimystik]

Hehe.

The Lorem Ipsum (http://www.inrebus.com/loremipsum.php) generator?

It writes like James Joyce.

This random nonsense I typed:
Plomgobble ghargarlda Robodum quirkel zwotofrlork yospodird oakarkal zogothransif melkeget zip zongo sal. Yorkeltorkel mimil ssharva tugulmu jark.

That's Stephen King.

That's all I needed to know about this thing.

[Tirian]

That's an automated tool, yes?

How is it supposed to know that?

There are ways to do a complex analysis. It has been long-held, for instance, that the Alice in Wonderland stories are significantly different from Lewis Carroll's other works, and there are those who use the same approaches to figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

Given the derision that has been heaped on this tool in the past 24 hours, it would appear to be only slightly more sophisticated than a random number generator. People who are more interested in it than I have noted that none of the cited authors reportedly wrote their own books.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I got Dan Brown too, from a roleplay post ;_;

However, a different post that was less forced got me Stephen King, so...

[Eldan]

Random word form Wikipedia:
About 200 times the word "winner" with no punctuation is Harry Harrison, a SciFI writer I've never heard of.

[Cubey]

The first post of my play-by-post game was Orwell. The last, Vonnegutt.

It seems I'm modernizing my writing style.

[Jahkaivah]

I wrote down a short nonsense poem I once made up and it likened me to Douglas Adams.

I'm ok with this.

[Eldan]

That thing really hates Harry Harrison.

The letter "a" repeated until it fills the box is also Harrison.

[Tengu_temp]

In War of the Worlds (one of the games I DM) I write like Vladimir Nabokov. That worries me.

In another, Mecha Sky Pirates, Chuck Palahniuk. If that means it will get adapted to a movie I'll like more than the original material, sign me in!

In Cubey's game, I write like Raymond Chandler. Seeing that my character has a lot of cynical inner monologues, this fits well.

In the Exalted game I play, Dan Brown. FFFFFFFFFFFFFF-

[Marillion]

I got Chuck Palahniuk. :smallbiggrin:

[bluewind95]

My story's prologue got me Vladimir Nabokov.

First chapter got me Stephen King.

And the chapter I'm writing got me Kurt Vonnegut.


I'm not sure if this is a good thing! This is an interesting little program. An AI, I suppose? That might explain a reason why it may give you results for nonsensical things. Sounds a lot like a neural network.

[Grumman]

That thing really hates Harry Harrison.

The letter "a" repeated until it fills the box is also Harrison.
More likely it is marginally closer to Harry Harrison's writing than anything else in the same way that Polaris is marginally closer to the North Pole than to any other point on Earth, and the creators didn't think to include any option for "This text is unlike anything we've ever seen".

[Eldan]

My story's prologue got me Vladimir Nabokov.

First chapter got me Stephen King.

And the chapter I'm writing got me Kurt Vonnegut.


I'm not sure if this is a good thing! This is an interesting little program. An AI, I suppose? That might explain a reason why it may give you results for nonsensical things. Sounds a lot like a neural network.

The site says it's actually statistical evaluation based on word choice and sentence structure. No neural networking, no.

[The J Pizzel]

I wrote the journal entry from a SW campaign I was playing and I got Douglas Adams.

:smallbiggrin:
I'm...just...
<wipes a tear>
I'm...just so proud of this moment.

[Lord Raziere]

:smalleek:

I apparently write like HP Lovecraft........

[Chambers]

Have gotten Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, and Stephen King. All three pieces were stuff written for PbP.

[The J Pizzel]

My second attempt (a background for a Madalorian Soldier and a review of a Counting Crows CD) both gave me Dan Brown.

:smalleek:

[chiasaur11]

My second attempt (a background for a Madalorian Soldier and a review of a Counting Crows CD) both gave me Dan Brown.

:smalleek:

Ah, happens.

Yeah, Dan Brown does seem to be a failsafe answer, so...

I really hope it doesn't indicate anything.

[bluewind95]

The site says it's actually statistical evaluation based on word choice and sentence structure. No neural networking, no.

A neural network can do that :smalltongue:

I wonder just how they do it, though. It's a neat thing to think about, whichever way they do it.

[Starfols]

Putting in 3 essays, I got Steven King, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Kurt Vonnegut. I'm more than satisfied with this :smallamused:

[SlyGuyMcFly]

William.

William friggin' Shakespeare.


Oh yeah.

:cool:

[Comet]

I don't have any of my embarassing fiction-writing on hand at the moment, so we're luckily spared of that.

I do, however, have the first draft of a comissioned translation work sitting on my computer. So here we go.

Apparently, when I'm trying to put the adventures of a bunch of talking penguins fighting against the horrors of Antarctica into English words, my writing resembles that of one Rudyard Kipling, of Junglebook fame.

Sounds good to me.

[The J Pizzel]

William.

William friggin' Shakespeare.


Oh yeah.

:cool:

Jerk. Not cool.

[chiasaur11]

William.

William friggin' Shakespeare.


Oh yeah.

:cool:

Allow me to quote a work of mine that also read as Shakespeare.

Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts


And so on.

[Joran]

A neural network can do that :smalltongue:

I wonder just how they do it, though. It's a neat thing to think about, whichever way they do it.

I just took a class on Natural Language Processing. Neural networks are currently out of fashion; the most likely candidates for this type of classification problem are:

Naive Bayesian Classifier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_Bayesian_classifier

Maximum Entropy Classifier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_entropy_classifier

Support Vector Machines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_vector_machine

[Axolotl]

It's fun to put various things in, for example a scientific website detailing the effects of nuclear weapons came out as like Douglas Adams. And aparantly Gary Gygax writes like Dan Brown.

[Anteros]

Apparently Mark Twain writes just like Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau writes like James Fenimore Cooper and Ernest Hemingway writes like Stephen King.

I wouldn't give this thing too much credit.




Allow me to quote a work of mine that also read as Shakespeare.

Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts


And so on.

Truly, a masterpiece. Why hasn't this been published yet!

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Allow me to quote a work of mine that also read as Shakespeare.

Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts


And so on.

He always distinguished himself for classy writing.



Apparently Mark Twain writes just like Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau writes like James Fenimore Cooper and Ernest Hemingway writes like Stephen King.

I wouldn't give this thing too much credit.

Also: Cervantes reads like Poe, Camus like Ray Bradbury.

Edit: On the other hand, it seems to be able to identify Austen quite well.

[Swordguy]

J. R. R. Freaking. Tolkein.

Heck yeah.

I submitted the the first page or so of the first draft of the campaign backstory I wrote up while recovering at the Ft. Jackson hospital back in 2005. Judge for yourself (warning, long. Also warning: first draft):

THE FIRST AGE
The gods create a world and populate it with the Edain (ee-DAY-ihn) - the First Ones - a hermaphroditic and perfect race to serve to gods. The gods lavish love and attention upon the Edain as a doting parent would upon a child. An age passes as the Edain, as children are wont to do, imitate their elders and create their own life upon the face of (world). They discover and codify the Elder Arts (magic) and with it creatures; some fusions of other, natural animals, and still others created uniquely from whole cloth. Their final creation is humankind - as the gods did to them, so too did the Edain create humankind to serve them in turn. With the creation of a fully-sentient race, one among the Edain, a tremendously powerful Edain known as Magelin (MAH-geh-lin), proclaims that the Edain need no longer serve the gods. Why be the mere servants of the gods if the Edain have matched the gods greatest creation of sentient life - proving themselves the gods' equals.

WAR OF THE FIRMAMENT - the Gods vs Edain

Banding together, the Edain strike the gods unawares, felling XXXXXXXXX. Shocked and furious that their servants have turned against them, the gods strike back. In the span of a mere day, they rain fire from heaven down upon the homes and cities of the Edain, reshaping the world in a flaming holocaust. Their intent to wipe the world clean and start anew was clear, but at the last, the supplications of suffering mankind reached their ears and their hearts softened. Mankind, created by the Edain and having no part or say in this terrible war, is truly innocent. The gods soften their judgment. Instead of obliterating al life, the reform it. The Edain are split; no longer a perfect and hermaphroditic race, they are separated by their natures. Those who favored (their more feminine nature - find better phrasing) are transformed in an instant into the Eldar - the Elves. Those with a more masculine and martial bent; who love artificial creation and the forge fires, are made into the stocky Khazad; the Dwarves. To prevent them from rising again against the gods, in their hearts are set a deep emnity and distrust for their opposites. As for innocent mankind, they are gently lifted up and set far to the East, free to pursue their destinies as they see fit. In mankind only do the gods close off the talent for the Elder Arts; the ways of magic that had allowed the Edain to rise up against their creators were shut away from mankind, just in case. The gods would not be threatened a second time.


THE SECOND AGE (approx 5500 yrs)
The gods, united in the moments of their triumph over the Edain, were now sundered from one another; the pantheon divided into two camps. Three of the gods _______, ___________, ________, believed that mankind was an intriguing resource and could be so much more is the gods were simply to take a more direct hand in their development. The other ten gods disagreed - putting power into lesser hands before had proved nearly disasterous. They felt their role was simply to watch over and guard mankind from afar; to let mankind forge its own destiny. For (five thousand years), the diente held, and isolated from one another, Elves, Dwarves, and Man slowly rose and established their own civilizations and rules of law. Separated as they were, they warred only against their environments and the survivors of the ancient Edain experiments (whom quickly spread throughout the wilderness tracts of _________ after the Edain's fall).

The dealings between the two camps of the gods became embittered, and the three dissenters tired of the enforced isolation of the various Races. Each cloaked in a divine disguise, they stealthily descended upon the world to "improve" the Races as they saw fit - each God choosing one Race upon which to experiment. The Elves and Dwarves proved stubbornly resistant to change - perhaps a last legacy of their past near-divinity - and the dissenting Gods were forced to use more...drastic...methods to make the changes they desired. These experiments resulted in entirely new races, the Drow (descended from Elves) and Duergar (from Dwarves). However, to ________'s delight, mankind proved to be exceedingly malleable; their natures designed to be adaptable to the Edain's wishes for a specifically-tempered servant. While _________ and ________ bred their "improved" races in the deep corners of the world away from the wandering eyes of the other gods, __________, in the guise of a wise councillor, took the ear of the greatest of mankind's kings and, over time, bent his nature more to ________'s liking. Through this king, and more importantly that of his heirs, _________ bent and twisted the mores of the kingdom, a hairsbreath at a time, for three hundred years. By the end, the kingdom was naught but a realm of fear and violence, where the strong sacrificed the weak for a moment's gain, all in the name of their King and his eternal "advisor". Finally, in an orgy of lust and blood, they burst forth from their borders, ravaging across the western realms of Elves, Dwarves, and Men and annihilating all that crossed their path. (IDEA: Stories from the War; last, desperate heroism; calls upon gods that went unanswered; mortals who fought unknowingly with disguised gods) The smoke from the uncounted funeral pyres reached the heavens, and the gods recoiled at the horror their children wrought. In this dark hour, _________ cast aside his cloak of deception, calling upon his divine power to create monsters and Dragons from whole cloth to march and conquer alongside the armies of corrupted Men. But in his hubris, he revealed himself too soon, before victory was assured, and the gods who in the name of isolation had turned their faces from the desperate supplications of Men, Elf, and Dwarf had to them their folly at the last laid bare. Furious, they descended upon the world, and in the divine light of their coming the armies of Men quailed, and the monsters ran to dark places to hide, and the Dragons wheeled in plumes of flame to either fall stone dead from the skies or flee to mountain caves, where in sleep they may escape the memories of raging gods.

In moments, the ten gods subdued and imprisoned their brethren in the bowels of the world and upon each of their gaols laid seven adamantine seals. In this way, the Imprisoned Ones could themselves never walk again upon the surface of the world. The forces required to create these prisons changed the face of the world; again, as in the Edain's war against the Gods, mountains fell, seas emptied, and the existing civilizations were shattered beyond all hope of repair. But the Ten Gods dispaired, for they knew that though the Imprisoned Ones could not physically escape their prisons, they could still grant power to any supplicants through the divine line of True Belief, for which there was no counter. Further, to maintain the seals on the prisons would take the eternal concentration of all Ten Gods, which meant they themselves could no longer manifest on behalf of their own supplicants. In the end, ___________, god of the sun, realized a solution. While the Imprisoned Ones could grant their followers a fraction of their power through True Belief, so too could the remaining gods name Priests and Champions upon the world to defend Men, Dwarves, and Elves from the predations of followers of the Imprisoned Ones. The other gods agreed to take up this duty, and never again have the blessed feet of the divine ones touched the world. The only remnant of their passing is mithril - iron touched and tranformed by their divine flesh - and adamantine - stone upon which their divine feet once rested.

[monomer]

Hmm, an analysis of a section of background info of an engineering scoping study I'm writing for a customer is supposedly similar to Charles Dickens.

I guess it makes sense... I never liked reading Dickens, and I never like reading my own reports.

[Eldan]

Allow me to quote a work of mine that also read as Shakespeare.

Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts


And so on.

Well, if some articles I read about innuendo in Shakespeare's works are correct, that seems appropriate.

[chiasaur11]

Apparently Mark Twain writes just like Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau writes like James Fenimore Cooper and Ernest Hemingway writes like Stephen King.

I wouldn't give this thing too much credit.!

Thoreau, at least, I already mentioned.

It reads things that suck as Cooper.

[Bonecrusher Doc]

Using my first posts of PbP games (setting the stage for the characters to arrive), I write like:

Arthur Conan Doyle
James Joyce
Robert Louis Stevenson (x2)

This makes me want to go read some of their works now to see if I see a resemblance to my own writing.

[Lord Raziere]

I wonder what results we would get if we ran something bad like Paolini's or Meyers writing......

I also wonder what would happen if you just typed a paragraph of nothing but a's.

edit: I just typed in a paragraph of nothing but a's....

it came out as "you write like Harry Harrison"

...........who in the name of the world is Harry Harrison? :smallconfused:

[Cespenar]

I fed this thing some of my character backgrounds. It came up: Dan Brown, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Raymond Chandler, J. D. Salinger, Harry Harrison, etc. with very few of them repeating. I think, at the end, Hemingway took the lead by 3 points when I got bored. Weird stuff.

And on an experiment, the letter 'a' times 32 (without any space) gives Harry Harrison. Spread that many 'a's to 2 or 4 lines, it's still Harry Harrison. Spread that to 8 lines, however, and you get Agatha Christie. Surely you wonder what will happen if you spread it to 16 and 32 lines. :smalltongue:

You get Edgar Allan Poe and Vladimir Nabokov, respectively.

Yeah.

Edit: Oh, and apparently, this post reads like Nabokov as well.

[The Glyphstone]

I'm going to write up a post here, minus the name of the author that I write like, then paste it in and see what author this post is written in the style of. Here goes nothing.

EDIT: The above sounds like James Joyce.

[WalkingTarget]

Ha! I put in my first long post in this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80550&highlight=Middle-Earth) thread about Middle-earth magic from a while back and I got J.R.R. Tolkien in return. Seems fitting.

[Sanguine]

Well I put in a bit of my campaign notes and I write like H.P. Lovecraft. I put in two posts from said campaign(in case you haven't guessed it's a pbp game) and one came up as Lovecraft the other Dickens.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I put my book's prologue in. I write like J.R.R. Tolkien. :smallbiggrin:

And my blog? I write like Chuck Palahniuk. The first rule of my blog is, we do not talk about my blog.

[tassaron]

I put in a couple of blog entries and short stories. All of them got Chuck Palahniuk. :smallbiggrin:

[Ravens_cry]

A post from my old blog is written like. . .Douglas "Don't Panic" Adams.
Yeah Baby!:smallamused:
Don't Take My Sunset is written like. . .Dan Brown. Ugh!:smalleek:
My Sagan-esque screed on the Pale Blue Dot is written like Margaret Atwood. :smallconfused: Intriguing.

[Mauve Shirt]

A script I'm writing got me Chuck Palahniuk. The other story I'm writing got me James Joyce.

[Turcano]

Okay, apparantly my pseudo-fanfic vignette reads like Ian Fleming, a linguistics paper of mine reads like James Joyce, a biology report like Edgar Allen Poe, and a tax memorandum like Jonathan Swift.

Also, the results of some cursory experimentation:
{table=head] Source | Result
Shakespeare: Hamlet | Mark Twain
Shakespeare: Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare
Shakespeare: As You Like It | James Joyce
Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream | William Shakespeare
Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part 2 | William Shakespeare
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales: Prologue (Original) | William Shakespeare
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales: Prologue (Modern) | James Joyce
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Tale (Original) | William Shakespeare
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s Tale (Modern) | Dan Brown
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Tale (Original) | William Shakespeare
Chaucer: Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Tale (Modern) | Dan Brown
Twain: Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain
Twain: The Awful German Language | H.P.Lovecraft
Twain: Innocents Abroad | J.K.Rowling
Howard: The Pheonix on the Sword | Dan Brown
Austen: Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen

[/table]

[Drascin]

Aw, link isn't working for me. I was curious.

EDIT: Ah, for some reason clicking it had firefox insist in adding the www to the adress, even though it's not needed. And apparently...

With one character, I write like Stephen King.
With another, I write like Lovecraft (I have been trying to cut down on the adjectives, I swear!)
Yet another has me write like Salind.

I'm obviously a pretty erratic person, in terms of style :smalltongue:.

[SurlySeraph]

Putting in the backstory for a World of Darkness character I made, I got Kurt Vonnegut.

A CE Barbarian I made apparently sounds like J.D. Salinger. I... I kind of see it, actually. An angry middle-aged paladin, on the other hand, sounds like James Joyce.

Entering a conspiracy theory I wrote got me Stephen King. I personally would have labeled it more Vonnegut-ish, but apparently factory-farming pandas to use their fur as fire retardant to protect spiders that live inside people is King-ish.

Putting in my research paper on mosquito net distribution, I got Isaac Aasimov.

Putting in my paper comparing A Canticle for Leibowitz and Endgame by Samuel Beckett, I got Dan Brown.

I'm not seeing much rhyme or reason here.

[Eldan]

Oooh. I've got to try my research papers at work tomorrow. Good idea.

[Dogmantra]

Heh. I tried a few posts from my ex-notblog. "What a surprise" that my two favourite posts on there get Douglas Adams. I'm fine with that.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The website won't load for me.

[Callos_DeTerran]

Don't burn me alive, but why is writing like Dan Brown bad? I'm unfamiliar with his writing and have only seen the movies. I wasn't exactly impressed by what I saw though.

[VanBuren]

Don't burn me alive, but why is writing like Dan Brown bad? I'm unfamiliar with his writing and have only seen the movies. I wasn't exactly impressed by what I saw though.

It has a lot to do with his claims of "research" being ridiculous and his portrayal of things being wildly off the mark compared to reality. I don't know what the beef is with his writing style though.

[doliest]

I posted a bit of writing and it said I wrote like Stephen King. Then I posted a paragraph of random swearing and also got Stephen King. Yeah, that seems about right. :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

Apparently I write like Shakespeare.

Edit: And also like Lovecraft and Dickens. Nice.

[Mauve Shirt]

It has a lot to do with his claims of "research" being ridiculous and his portrayal of things being wildly off the mark compared to reality. I don't know what the beef is with his writing style though.

I agree, Dan Brown's style isn't bad. I actually enjoyed his books while I was reading them, and finished before thinking "Gosh, that was stupid."

[shadow_archmagi]

I fed it this very silly short story I wrote.



“I suppose, as long as I'm going to kill you, I might as well reveal my plan” he gloated. Evangi had been waiting a long time for this moment. As spoke he toyed with a jeweled dagger, tossing it back and forth between his hands. He would have done the trick where you balance the dagger by it's point on your finger, but he didn't know how, and the dagger was poisoned anyway.
“Damn you!” cried the brash young prince Adrian. “What fiendish and bedeviled scheme have you cooked up this time!?”
“I don't think bedeviled is a word.” replied the evil vizier. “Perhaps it is, but I'm pretty sure it's just a way of cooking eggs.”
“...” said Adrian.
“Anyway, I suppose I had best get on with my evil gloat. Right. Plan.” At this point Evangi stood and swaggered over to where his guards were holding the heroic lad.
“First, I'm going to kill you. Then I'll take over the world.” As he finished the sentence, he used the dagger. “And with the prince stabbed, I will be in a supreme position to do exactly that. Hmm. They call it a dagger, but it stabs. Why not a stabber? I suppose stabber refers to the person doing the stabbing. Still. Well, prince, consider yourself dagged.” This last remark was never heard by Adrian, who had already bled to death earlier in the sentence.
---
SOME TIME LATER
---
Trumpets blared. Fanfares fared. Hundreds of white doves were released, having been specially constipated to prevent any unfortunate incidents. The soon-to-be-former-grand-vizier approached the throne, where the crown was waiting for him. It was large, and gold, and shiny. It was a very expensive way of saying “OBEY THE PERSON BENEATH THIS SIGN.”
There was a long-winded speech on the part of the clergy saying that they had definitely been talking to the supreme being of the universe and that they were quite certain he approved of the new king and felt the coronation was a strong step in the right direction and that for choosing such a splendid man all the clergy deserved a sizable donation.
Eventually, the Vizier got to put on the crown. He grinned, and knew that there was no one who could stop him now. Then, as if in response, came a voice from the crowd. “Not so vast! You have not won yet!”
The king lept to his feet and shouted back “Who dares defy the authority of the crown! Show yourself!”
Using the sort of herd-survival instincts buried deep within every nameless crowd member, the crowd immediately parted, revealing a tall, gaunt man with an enormous wig and golden monocle. “It is I, the only one with power enough to thwart an evil such as you!”
Evangi recognized his old foe and laughed an evil laugh. “Ah, the old Duke of Westlingtonburyvilleburg! You may have been outranked me before, but I am king now! KING!”
“Oh really?” said the duke, as he slowly reached towards his immense wig. “I think not!” he cried, as he ripped it from his head, revealing a golden crown even more magnificent than Evangi's “Because I am actually not a duke, but the SUPER KING!”


It said I write like J.K. Rowling.

EDIT: I just fed it an unfinished short story from march 2009



There are any number of ways for a town to begin. The oldest cities can trace their roots right back to a flag, heroically jammed into some piece of random wilderness by an explorer who had decided if he was going to wander through miles of fierce underbrush he damn well wasn’t going to be carrying a flag the whole way. (This is why one always finds so many cities within miles of a river or coast (The whole Atlantis incident was just a case of ditching the flag BEFORE getting off the boat))
Downtrod was not such a place. It had not been founded. It had simply come to exist. It had begun as The Bar For The Weary Downtrodden Or Similar Leaders Of Imperfect Lives (Market research had indicated a direct approach would be best) but as buildings went up nearby the sign had succumbed to time, weather, and vandals.
In it’s heyday, the town had included all of twelve streets. It had had shops and restaurants and a mall. There had been a bank. It had had houses, and apartments, and flats. Now, after the war, it included mostly flat apartments. It’s population, depending on where the line was drawn, came to seventeen dozen.
Anson Caard, on some level, knew all this. He hadn’t learned it and he hadn’t thought about it. He didn’t know he knew. Well; that’s an untruth. He didn’t know anybody didn’t know. As he fumbled in what remained of his jacket, he reflected on what nice people this ball of dirt must have. It was important to know who you could and couldn’t trust ahead of time. His line of thought was cut short by the complete lack of anything in his pockets.
There was nothing for it but to head into town. He wouldn’t normally have done so; he was a firm believer in Osmosis: Spend a night in a rat-trap and you tend to walk out more like a trapped rat. Today though; he’d appreciate a promotion to trapped rat.
The difference between the Welcome To sign and any actual signs of civilization is always one of miles. This is so that the lone wanderer can pause and lean against the sign while the wind artfully billows his long coat. Then, a small smile can creep across his face, and if times are sufficiently prosperous (by wasteland standards) he'll have a cigarette to flick aside and stomp out before heading off towards town.
True to form, Anson stopped and did all of these things. It helped him stay in character. As the camera pans way back and the clouds of dust begin to obscure our view, we see him start to laugh.
---
We’re in a bar now, and there’s an extraordinary sensation in the air: bona fide jolliness. In most taverns, the primary demographic is a combination of those who regret something and plan to forget by becoming incredibly drunk, or those who’re drunk enough that they’re going to do something they’ll regret. Today though, the place is almost a caricature of itself. There’s a steady, upbeat piano rhythm going, and occasionally the chatter will pause for a moment while everyone enjoys a hearty laugh. The bartender has caught the vibe and is scrubbing absentmindedly and arbitrarily on the table, just to look the part. The overall appearance is one of a people who are poor, tired, know it, but at the moment, don’t mind.
At this point the door opens, and Anson enters. Not everyone is paying attention to the door, of course, so it isn’t so much an instant silence but rather the noise dying down; a slow death by strangulation as one by one people either realize what’s happening, or simply notice everyone else is quiet and hop on the bandwagon.
The first to speak, technically, is a young man in the back, whispering, “Who’s this? What’s going on?” to his friend, but he doesn’t count because he isn’t important and starting with random comments from the crowd is very untraditional. The correct first speaker is the bartender.
“Well. Never thought I’d see you again” the bartender said. He was by nature a listener rather than a talker (and listening to drunks builds few speech skills) so while he would’ve liked his sentence to be described as something like “He put enough venom into the word “you” to poison whole cities and still have enough left over to cause serious illness in an area roughly the size of northern Bulgaria” or “He spat the words out like they were a mixture of vomit, feces, and dead children and he was a world class spitter who’d been practicing extra hard this year” the actual effect was that he said the word “you” with the intonation and facial expression of someone undergoing a bowel movement. Anson noticed all this.
“I thought I might drop in, but then I remembered I didn’t like heights, so I decided I’d walk in” said Anson. The audience was not amused, but his goal had been to lower their expectations rather than buy sympathy. A young man (not the confused one mentioned earlier who didn’t speak first) in a blindingly red shirt steps forward and speaks.
“Maybe you should try a drop. Say, three feet and a piece of rope sound about right?” He grins with that special facial expression that’s as good as sitting down and explaining exactly how things are going to go and why it is you won’t like this course of events at all.
“Bernard old friend! I see you still have that pretty pretty shirt you stole from your mother. Charming woman. How is she?" Anson was quick enough to see where things were going: Bernard wanted to rile the crowd, build up some hatred. It takes very little angry drunken mob to do terrible things. Bernard didn't even need that; he would do it himself and get away with it unless he acted fast. Bernard was just getting around to responding.
"Still dead. Cause of what you done." Anson was caught off guard by the accusation in the same sense that a trained assassin is caught off guard when his target is defended by children with nerf bats. This was going to be easier than he thought.
"What? I was a dirty rotten no good lying pigstealing swindler, I know. But even I, the lowest possible form of life, even I never saw fit to sink so low. Man who kills a man ain't worth fly dirt." The crowd was confused now. None of them remembered any murder, but they did distinctly remember whose side they were supposed to be on and so a few self-reassuring cries went out. "


It said that THIS short story was in the style of H.P. Lovecraft.

[Otogi]

I got Stephenie Meyer.

[shadow_archmagi]

I got Stephenie Meyer.

I'm so sorry.

[chiasaur11]

I got Stephenie Meyer.

What Shadow said.

I mean, Brown, he's an awful author, but he's got a style.

Meyer...

Bad luck. Hope it's a coincidence.

[Weezer]

I plugged in three different things and got three different results...

An essay on Plato got Dan Brown, one blog post got Margaret Atwood and another got George Orwell. Not sure if that means the site is wonky or my writing is very variable...

[Philistine]

Gimme all your Lovecraft/All your eldritch horrors too! (http://iwl.me/s/147eabd8)

There may be some who say this is only appropriate, but you shouldn't listen to those people.
*tries to look innocent*

[shadow_archmagi]

Given that my first story was meant to resemble Half Life Full Life Consequences and my second to be slightly Pratchett-like, I think the site is just full of carp.

[Turcano]

More experimentation: The Horrible Fanfic Edition.

{table=head]Source | Result
The Eye of Argon | William Shakespeare
My Immortal | J.K. Rowling
Legolas by Laura | J.R.R. Tolkien
Sailor Moon: American Kitsune | H.P. Lovecraft
Doom: Repercussions of Evil | Douglas Adams
Star Trek: The Next Fornication | Steven King
My Inner Life | Raymond Chandler
Celebrian | Steven King
Metal Gear Solid: Fight of the Metal Gears | James Joyce
The Ben Chatham Adventures: Caves of Oblivion | Kurt Vonnegut
[/table]

Oh, and how could I forget:

{table=head]Source | Result
A Sonichu and Rosechu Christmas Story | Kurt Vonnegut
[/table]

[Foeofthelance]

I entered the first few pages I wrote of the Warhammer 40K novel I'm writing. It concerns a tyranid attack on an Imperial guard base.

I got Douglas Adams.

So now I have an idea for a WH40K/Hitchhikers Guide crossover...

[doliest]

More experimentation: The Horrible Fanfic Edition.
Oh, and how could I forget:

{table=head]Source | Result
A Sonichu and Rosechu Christmas Story | Kurt Vonnegut
[/table]

That's proof this thing is programmed perfectly. That IS a Vonnegut work; his twisted world view and sarcasm, I could really see him writing that.

[cleric_of_BANJO]

So this was kind of weird. I put in a paper (well, it's the written version of a persuasive speech) about the lack of farmers and how it'll affect the world. Apparently, I wrote that like Isaac Asimov.

However, I think I understand how the program works. It doesn't actually check your writing style or sentence structure, it just scans it for words that are related to things authors have written. For example, I put in an essay about George Orwell's 1984, and guess who I write like now?

[Tirian]

That's proof this thing is programmed perfectly. That IS a Vonnegut work; his twisted world view and sarcasm, I could really see him writing that.

On the other hand, it's laughable to think that Mark Twain wrote Hamlet. I don't know what the algorithm is, but it's got flaws.

[Jamin]

Put in a few of my papers for school and I did not get a single repeat. odd

[Quick_Lime]

William Shakespeare for me. Shakespeare's style, according to Wikipedia, "borrowed from the conventions of the day, while at the same time adapting to his needs."

[Raistlin1040]

So, I tried this with three things, wondering if I'd see any degree of similarity. First, I input anything that was fiction that I'd written, for D&D games, setting backgrounds, short stories, novel, play, anything that could be vaguely defined as fiction. 7 Stephen Kings
6 Dan Browns
3 Ian Flemings, Lewis Carrolls, HP Lovecrafts, and Chuck Palahniuks
2 James Joyces, Kurt Vonneguts
1 Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Leo Tolstoy, Douglas Adams, Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler
Okay. I'm a bit put off by the Dan Brown, but considering my three biggest conscious influences are Stephen King, Lewis Carroll, and Chuck Palahniuk, I'm going to give this an okay. I like Joyce, Vonnegut, Shakespeare, and Nabokov a fair bit too, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'd picked up a few of their traits.
Next, I took a sample of 25 of my blog entries, from the past two years. I chose the ones with the most in them, for accuracy's sake. My results were as follows. 25 blog entries later and we have
7 Dan Browns
5 Stephen Kings
2 James Joyces, HP Lovecrafts, Vladimir Nabokovs, Margaret Atwoods, and Douglas Adams
1 Charles Dickens, Chuck Palahniuk, and George OrwellAgain, Dan Brown. Still don't think so. Stephen King shows up again in bulk, and (though I've never read him) Lovecraft has a combined 5 now. Something to watch perhaps.
Lastly, I put in 5 essays I wrote in the last school year, for my English, History, and Child Psychology classes, and one from two years ago. 2 HP Lovecrafts
1 Mario Puzo, William Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood, and Kurt Vonnegut.Perhaps not a big enough sample size, but the fact I only got one repeat was odd. So I compiled all my data, to see what was most common across all 3 mediums.13 Dan Browns
12 Stephen Kings
7 HP Lovecrafts
4 Chuck Palahniuk and James Joyces,
3 Kurt Vonneguts, Douglas Adams, Vladimir Nabokov, Lewis Carrolls, Ian Flemings, and Margaret Atwoods
2 Charles Dickens and William Shakespeares
1 George Orwell, Mario Puzo, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Leo Tolstoy and Raymond ChandlerMake of this what you will.

[Cobalt]

*enters in random chapter of recent work*

...Who the damn is Chuck Palahniuk? Should I know this person? Because apparently I write like them.

Imma inter an tri moar stuffs naow.

[VanBuren]

*enters in random chapter of recent work*

...Who the damn is Chuck Palahniuk? Should I know this person? Because apparently I write like them.

Imma inter an tri moar stuffs naow.

Fight Club is Chuck Palahniuk. So is other stuff, but that's the most famous one.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Fight Club is Chuck Palahniuk. So is other stuff, but that's the most famous one.
You don't talk about that book.

[Pie Guy]

A post I just wrote about Avatar said I write like Asimov.

Edit: I just put in a research paper that was worth 12% of my final history grade. Dan Brown :smalleek:


I got an A-, it's alright.

[doliest]

A post I just wrote about Avatar said I write like Asimov.

Edit: I just put in a research paper that was worth 12% of my final history grade. Dan Brown :smalleek:


I got an A-, it's alright.

Was your professor grading on content, or length + grammar? :smalltongue:

[Murkus]

I put in a bit of PbP writing. Apparently I write like Stephen King.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oGy5uZRLFnQ/SRNjf6F5EhI/AAAAAAAAAYg/8qwzefZoMSg/s320/shark-gorilla.png

[Cobalt]

Fight Club is Chuck Palahniuk. So is other stuff, but that's the most famous one.

Ah. I was wondering if I had at some point read that book or not. Apparently not, because lord knows I'd remember a name like his.

Can't even pronounce it. Though from what I hear; talented guy.

[Dogmantra]

However, I think I understand how the program works. It doesn't actually check your writing style or sentence structure, it just scans it for words that are related to things authors have written. For example, I put in an essay about George Orwell's 1984, and guess who I write like now?

I think this is spot on. A friend put in something very magic-heavy. Got JK Rowling. It would also explain why Butts Butts Butts etc gets Shakespeare. Hear he was big on the butts.

[Eddums]

The last couple of paragraphs from a history essay on Stalin got me Ian Fleming.
Coincidence, 007? I doubt it.

[Terraoblivion]

I'm a bit worried that most of my early stuff for Alexandra, my character in Tengu's War of the Worlds game, got me James Joyce...I feel sorry for everybody else in that game who had to suffer through that. Her diaries get me Ernest Hemingway though. And my more recent stuff is apparently some odd fusion of Dickens and Vonnegut. Seems like i'm a very inconsistent writer with this character...

Now let's take some quick looks at some of my other ones.

Mireio, my character in another of his games, is written by H. G. Wells
Yasmin is by Stephen King
Lea is by Raymond Chandler, which is honestly pretty awesome i think
Iris, one of my Exalted characters, is by Dan Brown...i wonder what ritual of penitence i should perform to remove this stain.
Wandering Moon, my other Exalted character, is by Stephen King as well
And let's see who i am when just writing as myself and not for any character...Kurt Vonnegut it appears. Didn't quite see that coming.

[Revlid]

Well, this:
Building a weapon is something special. It’s like a father-son relationship. You watch someone load and **** a gun that you made, and it’s like watching your child take his first steps. You see someone shot with that gun, and it feels like your offspring just graduated college.

Inventing a weapon, setting up new borders in murder, now that’s something else. That’s like being a- a proud patriarch, looking over a family tree that extends and branches out for generations, each one of their accomplishments inextricably linked to yours.

Ceramic firearms and miniaturised weaponry, they were the creations that made my name in this business, but they also made me feel so... great. Not just good, but great – large, grand, important. Their propagation made me feel as though I was at the head of a grand dynasty, watching it roll out ahead of me, gathering prestige with each custom job and new model, even those I had never touched.

But this? This is an order of magnitude above that. I feel like Aeneas, having entered the underworld and seen the grand destiny of Rome laid out for me, centuries in the making. This weapon... it’ll change everything. Forever.

I mean, the best case scenario in terms of casualties is another Cold War, and this time we’ll likely as not have Europe and China joining in for a proper four-way, not to mention what’ll happen if damn-near anyone in the Middle-East gets their hands on one.

The worst case scenario is the kind of thing that made Oppenheimer quote the Bhagavad Ghita. This thing’ll make Nagasaki, Hiroshima, every other weapon debut in history look like a slap-fight. Between babies. It can’t be stopped, it can’t be detected, it can’t be anticipated or deflected – point it at a city, any city in the world, and you might as well mark it off your maps.

And since I’ve never been an optimist with regards to humanity’s violent tendencies, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this thing – my creation, my baby, my legacy – is going to kill billions. And while I know I should feel apprehensive and appalled, I have to admit, I’m actually kind of aroused.

Shall we get on with the presentation, gentlemen?
Got a comparison to Chuck Palahniuk, which seems pretty accurate to me.

This chunk of unfinished fluff about a homebrewed Yozi:
If a tree falls in the forest, and no-one hears it, does it make a sound? This koan did not exist before the Primordial War, for in those days there was always one to hear it. Obirscep, the Ever-New Observer, observed and recorded within the tablets of his souls all things of Creation, from the development of new concepts to the motions of fish shoals. He defined things by his observance, for if none could observe it, how could it be said to exist?

His sentimentality shone through in his attitude toward things that did not exist – species discarded and extinct before Creation began, concepts of physical law deemed untenable during their development, or simply lost works of art. These things he preserved in the form of mementos, remembrances within his great museum-soul – the jade tusks of a forgotten behemoth, tools designed to measure dimensions no longer in existence, or a poem dedicated to a wind long-since withered. And if one or two things were extinguished before their time... That simply made them more precious, did it not? Obirscep was the first Primordial to realise the concept of material value.

When the Primordial War began, Obirscep was targeted to prevent the Observer from revealing every movement of the Exalts. His recording tablets, five-dimensional and ever-updating, were shattered, his collections of unique artifacts plundered for war, and those exhibits deemed useless burned or discarded – but he survived. His fetich soul dead, and he as twisted as his kin, but still alive. Obirscep is long gone. Instead, Iat Nescip, the Hoard of Fireless Smoke, rages within the cage of Malfeas.

Iat Nescip forms one of the more static elements of that hell-realm. While the other Yozi’s world-forms shift and roil against each other like restless children in a shared bed, Iat Nescip remains stubbornly rooted, clutching to his position. This is a fact of some comfort to lesser demons, as the travels of the Black Boar or the occasional behemoth are bad enough, and the movements of Adorjan are a constant threat – they can do without a massive, many-headed volcano being on the move.

Visible for leagues around, the peaks of Iat Nescip are fireless, topped by pitch-black caldera with no visible end – the jagged rock that rings their edges arches unpleasantly, like teeth ringing an insatiable mouth. Despite the lack of any visible lava, vast columns of smoke spew from Iat Nescip’s mouths, indicating his mouth – relative good cheer mingles the smog with glittering gold dust, while his more common sour moods stain the clouds so black that even Ligier’s light is blocked from his lower peaks. In times of true rage, the clouds vanish entirely, drawn back into their respective caldera by a terrible suction that pulls in loose boulders and unfortunate demons alike.

No longer is the Yozi driven to record, but rather to possess. He has discarded his love of the simple myriads of Creation, and now favours only those things he perceives to be valuable – without any context or particular understanding of value, this most often equates to things others have, things others want, or simply unique items. It is these things he keeps deep within himself, in his silent and unsmouldering belly.

The ground around the lower peaks of Iat Nescip is boiling, heated by the constant passage of his soul The Smokeless Fire in the tunnels beneath. Acidic steam hisses up from jagged cracks and holes in the earth, the result of Kimbery’s lapping at his heels. Some lesser demons work as navigators from the outskirts of the Hoard to its base or even further, recognising through experience the tell-tale signs of an imminent eruption of deadly steam.

At the actual base of the volcanoes, The Smokeless Fire can be seen clearly. 8th of Iat Nescip’s souls, the Smokeless Fire and four of its equally elemental 2nd Circle demons roam through the tunnelled veins in the vicinity of Iat Nescip, generating the sweltering heat of the area and making passage within the otherwise extinct volcanoes a risky prospect at best. These demon-souls return periodically to the base of their Yozi, as though changing watch, so the molten, pustule-like openings into the hollows below are always filled with fire, though its character changes with each soul. Some of these openings are capped by hardy demons, and used to fuel furnaces or forges – if they’re willing is to brave the environment and pay tribute to The Smokeless Fire, they might even survive.
Got a comparison to H.P. Lovecraft, which seems appropriate enough.

And the first chapter of a Scarecrow-centric fanfic was compared to Stephen King, so all things considered I'm feeling pretty good.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with this little tool, although I'd love it if it included a breakdown as to why our writing is like that particular author's. And if it expanded its range of writers more.

[Ashen Lilies]

Put in a silly story about oranges I wrote and got Douglas Adams. Considering he is the influence for my writing... Of course, I put a freeform post in and got James Joyce, so maybe this machine isn't very smart. :smalltongue:

Edit: Put in a Room 101 parody I wrote and got Wodehouse. Oh yeah.

[Anonymoose]

I don't have any writing to feed this, but apparently Stephen King wrote the lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up.

Huh.

[Deca]

J.K Rowling huh? I'm okay with that.

Edit: Making it analyse it's own introductory paragraphs came up with H.P Lovecraft for some reason.

[Klose_the_Sith]

Lovecraft, hellsyeah :smallcool:

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I don't have any writing to feed this, but apparently Stephen King wrote the lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up.

Huh.
That's amazing.

[Cristo Meyers]

Heh, put in two different parts of a long-running project of mine and both came up J.K. Rowling.

The analysis may be about as worthwhile as picking a name out of a hat, but it made me laugh at least :smallbiggrin:

[Sereg]

Putting in some of my work gave me:

Isaac Asimov, Chuck Palahniuk, Harry Harrison, J. K. Rowling x 2, Dan Brown x 4, James Joyce x 2, Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, H. P. Lovecraft, William Shakespeare and Margaret Atwood.

Maybe if I can dig up some older work, I'll feed that in too.

[Blue Ghost]

My ship ("The Little Red-Haired Girl (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8165619&postcount=451)") gave me Stephen King.

[VanBuren]

Raymond Chandler wrote Tik Tok.

William Shakespeare is responsible for Katy Perry's "California Gurls"

And Eminem's latest hit? Stephen King.

[ex cathedra]

My first entry, including the term 'Mithril,' was similar to Tolkien.
My second? Nabokov. There's nothing wrong with that, at least.
My third, referencing the name Bokonon, was, unsurprisingly, like Vonnegut.

I'm sensing a pattern.

Edit: And several lines of the name Kurt Vonnegut?
Written like Kurt Vonnegut.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Something wierd. I had it analyze a short story I'd written and it said it came out like Dan Brown. But then I had it analyze a PORTION of the short story, and it said it was like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What gives? :smallconfused:

[Lord Raziere]

even weirder: I had it analyze a part of my story, said Lovecraft, had it analyze the whole thing and it was still Lovecraft.

when I made it analyze a different story, it came out as JK Rowling.

[blueboy]

Something wierd. I had it analyze a short story I'd written and it said it came out like Dan Brown. But then I had it analyze a PORTION of the short story, and it said it was like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What gives? :smallconfused:

Your writing isn't consisten enough :smalltongue:

Its not flawless but it does seem to be pretty good when Mark Twain isn't concerned.


If it the fool who's foolish
or the knave who saves
the fool and then must hear
the fool prattle and rattle
about it foolish things
hear it sing about the king
or lords about the prince
and preens about the queen



That got Lewis Caroll which is what I was aiming for.

[Sinfonian]

I've input several of my writings and got different answers:

I put in the paper I wrote on the legacy of the Moynihan Report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moynihan_Report) and it said it was like H.P. Lovecraft. Can't say I understand the connection.

My criticism of the concept trailer for the new Mortal Kombat movie yielded Stephen King, makes a sort of sense.

The written version of a disastrous Valentine's Day trip got Douglas Adams, again makes sense in that the sequence of events could only have been generated by an Infinite Improbability Generator.

Finally, the introduction to my thesis said it was most like Ian Fleming, which given the Cold War subject matter is completely appropriate.

Edit: added one more example.

[un_known]

I wrote in this: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Which is one of the most famous H.P. Lovecraft lines ever and it came up as Edgar Allen Poe.

[Quincunx]

I believe it's counting punctuation to word ratio, as well, and other elements of style. Is it possible to get a James Joyce result if you use more than two or three punctuation marks per sentence?

Almost every piece of prose I've fed into it--story, conversational chatter, or 'no wonder people sat back, blinked, and asked in a small voice for me to please explain myself' poetry--has given back Stephen King. The subject matter is diverse, and the signal:noise ratio fluctuates, but my style is consistent.

[EDIT: It's counting punctuation, certainly. If I lash the analyzer with a post which answered multiple questions with the format "On subject X: this. On subject Y, that.", or with a post that abused the dash even more than my standard, I can wring out a James Joyce response. Coherence has no correlation to Joyce-ness. Only one 'Joyce' post earned it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6151051&postcount=134). And yes, that makes sense. To me.

. . .and with the edit added, this post itself analyzes as Dan Brown. Needs more punctuation.]

[Xyk]

From two parts of the novel I have written three pages in, I've gotten both Lovecraftian and Kurt Vonnegut (whom i have not heard of). I don't think this is a legitimate analyzer.

Edit: After Googling Vonnegut, I am pleased with the result.

[SurlySeraph]

I wrote in this: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Which is one of the most famous H.P. Lovecraft lines ever and it came up as Edgar Allen Poe.

"Nighted, penguin-fringed abyss" gave me Dan Brown. However, "That nighted, penguin-fringed abyss" got Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The evidence that this program uses Dan Brown as a default is steadily mounting.

Also, I tried some metal lyrics. Execute Them All by Unleashed got Mario Puzo. Invocation of the Continual One by Morbid Angel got Raymond Chandler. Entrenched by Bolt Thrower got George Orwell. Enter Sandman by Metallica got Shakespeare. And, best of all, Ravenous by Arch Enemy got Mark Twain.

[Morph Bark]

Apparently, for story titles, I'm like Oscar Wilde. For stories, I tend to be like Margaret Atwood (never read anything by her, anyone can offer me insight?) and for character histories, it's J.D. Salinger, writer of The Catcher in the Rye, which I also haven't ever read.

Hm, intruiging.

[Quincunx]

The Margaret Atwood analysis may be controlled by overuse of the question mark. Haven't the time to read your own offerings, right now. Tomorrow, maybe. Wouldn't want to miss good reading.

[Morph Bark]

The Margaret Atwood analysis may be controlled by overuse of the question mark. Haven't the time to read your own offerings, right now. Tomorrow, maybe. Wouldn't want to miss good reading.

Then that's very strange considering the texts had no question mark in them.

For the heck of it, I threw in "Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot Cowboy Hobos With Chain-Katanas And Several Revolvers And The Power Of Friendship Fighting Vampire Nazis With Dark Magic Riding Cyborg Dinosaurs With Head Mounted Lasers Voiced By Kevin Michael Richardson Attacked by Snakes On A Motherfrakkin' Submarine Jet With Desert Polar Bears Crashing Into An Ancient Zeppelin With Alien Anacondas In SPACE With Chuck Norris And Samuel L Jackson With Lesbian Time Travelling Bikini Werewolf Catgirls Dual Wielding Febreze Part 2: This Time, It's Personal" and I got Margaret Atwood too. Huh. Interesting.

Using older stories of mine gets me Dan Brown for the seriously-written ones and J.K. Rowling for the oddball ones that I wrote out of boredom and on fun ideas (then again with a title like "Piloswinewarts" that might have influenced it, but a song of mine about rocket train pirates got J.K. Rowling too -- guess J.K. Rowling means a fun read).

[AslanCross]

I analyzed five texts.


Nonfiction piece about getting lost: Dan Brown
Personal testimony for church: Kurt Vonnegut
Unfinished sci-fi short story: Dan Brown
Blog post about the elections: Stephen King (maybe it's so horrific?)
Blog post about a day in my life: Stephenie Meyer

*hangs head in shame*



Don't burn me alive, but why is writing like Dan Brown bad? I'm unfamiliar with his writing and have only seen the movies. I wasn't exactly impressed by what I saw though.

As VanBuren said above, he makes claims about "facts" that are actually poorly researched and wildly inaccurate. My other main beef with his writing style is that all his novels seem to have the same plot, the same characters, and the same resolution.

Something like:

0. Villain, who comes from a very esoteric background, perpetrates an unthinkable crime.
1. Main character, who has a very weird and esoteric job, discovers a grand conspiracy.
2. Main character meets smoking hot female while on the job.
3. Main character and female lead go on a wild goose chase with villain.
4. Main character and female lead discover that the villain is not the real villain and that the real villain is someone they work with.
5. Real villain is punished for his crimes somehow, usually by spectacular death.
6. Main character and female lead have sex.

That is not to say his novels are actually fun to read. They're great for turning your brain off.

[Coidzor]

But...But... IS CHIASAUR!!~ ....:smallfrown: Can't... Work... Out.... feelings. SO conflicted.:smallsigh:

[SurlySeraph]

It's counting punctuation, certainly. If I lash the analyzer with a post which answered multiple questions with the format "On subject X: this. On subject Y, that.", or with a post that abused the dash even more than my standard, I can wring out a James Joyce response. Coherence has no correlation to Joyce-ness. Only one 'Joyce' post earned it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6151051&postcount=134). And yes, that makes sense. To me.

Shouldn't dash abuse be Emily Dickinson? Particularly if combined with unnecessary capitalization? Eh, maybe it just doesn't look for poets.

[Woodsman]

So, inputting a backstory for a D&D character, I got Dan Brown.

Enter the latest chapter of a fanfic I'm writing.

Agatha Christie.

What the heck?

[ZeroNumerous]

Apparently a bit from my novel reads like Neil Gaiman. On one hand: I take that as a compliment. On the other: It adds a strange pressure.

[smuchmuch]

:smallbiggrin:That thing is hilarious as it feels random.
Somme backgrounds from few Pbp characters got me: Hp Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler (yay ! I take that as a compliment.now I must resist the urge to write all my background like that), Dan Brown and David Foster Wallace.
(The first three I know but the last one ? I'm pretty sure it's a bad thing though)*

There's a logic to the madness, though. The first one spoke about eldritch abomination from outer space and the second of murder. I assume it works by words and writting patern recognition.(the third one was, curiously, written as limerick, (an incredibly lame one admitedly))
(Oh and it doesn't care for typos and bad grammar apparently)

*Apparently using lots of parenthesis and side comments will get you that result

edit: also short texts with sort "subject, verb, complement" sentences may get you Ernest Hemingway. (Bwahahaha.) but short text with lot of dialogues (indicated with brackets), Stephen king

[Shades of Gray]

I got Stephen King. I do not know what this means.

[Juhn]

My e-mail infodump for an RPG character reads like David Foster Wallace. I'm not sure what to make of that, as I've never heard of the guy.

[Ravens_cry]

An unfinished science fiction piece written from the perspective of a technologically primitive race got J.R.R. Tolkien, which while indubitably awesome, was not surprising.
Yes, I am that arrogant.

[Kuma Da]

I popped in a section from a story I was writing, one largely inspired by Margaret Atwood's "Siren Song" (and also somewhat Bat For Lashes "Siren Song".)

Computer told me I write like Margaret Atwood.

I am stoked. :smallbiggrin:

[chiasaur11]

An unfinished science fiction piece written from the perspective of a technologically primitive race got J.R.R. Tolkien, which while indubitably awesome, was not surprising.
Yes, I am that arrogant.

Or that sure of the style as matched to the system?

[Ravens_cry]

Or that sure of the style as matched to the system?
Yeah, that sounds about right.

[Kiren]

I put in my partial story *that I very much want to work on again*, "Nuked". I write like Arthur C. Clarke apparently.

[Platinum_Mongoose]

Random snippets from the novel I'm writing got David Foster Wallace, James Joyce, and William Shakespeare. I'm curious as to the criteria this thing is scanning for.

There should be one for screenplays...

Edit: Put in a snippet of Hamlet, result was HP Lovecraft. Anyone else want to try a 1920s pulp horror retelling of that play?

[Em Blackleaf]

I was being silly and I wrote, "I'm a weird necrophiliac who loves sparkling vampires named Edward Cullen because I am into older guys.

I sat in my kitchen and ate spaghetti. Then I walked up the stairs to my bedroom. Edward was sitting on my bed because he had jumped up through the window. He was probably waiting for me. I asked him to turn me into a vampire and he said no because it would be too dangerous." AND I GOT STEPHENIE MEYER. xD I'm pretty sure I summarized Eclipse in that one. :smalltongue:

Anyway, I copy-pasted my facebook bio and I got David Foster Wallace.

Then, I copied a few essays I wrote for school and I got James Joyce several times. I know James Fenimore Cooper and Dan Brown came up a couple times. I do not know how to feel about those.

[Quincunx]

OK, then I don't know how the filter generates Margaret Atwood. I only got that result twice and those both contained rhetorical questions, and of her two novels that I read, conversational rhetorical questions cropped up in both. She has feminist tendencies, but nothing I extracted from the various feminist threads gave her as a result.

Good analysis from smuchmuch on separating 'Dan Brown' from 'Stephen King' results!


Shouldn't dash abuse be Emily Dickinson? Particularly if combined with unnecessary capitalization? Eh, maybe it just doesn't look for poets.

Heheheh. True, true. I hadn't analyzed any poetry on the grounds that most humans can't cope with the stuff, let alone a not very reliable algorithm.

[Rappy]

According to this tool, my game fluff works read as a bit of Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ursula K. Le Guin (!).

My blog posts, on the other hand, read as a mixture of Douglas Adams, Daniel Defoe, Dan Brown, and Raymond Chandler. In the same review.

So yeah.

[Destro_Yersul]

the first couple chapters of my novel got me Robert Louis Stevenson.

On the other hand, a short story I wrote using Lovecraft's style got me Dan Brown, for some reason.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I tried to get HP Lovecraft by writing "squamous" four times but got Ursula Le Guin. But when I misspelled it as "squamos" I got Neil Gaiman. In fact, a ton of random characters gets you Neil Gaiman.

"Eldritch" four times got Lovecraft.

"Thesaurus" four times also got Gaiman. No idea what that proves though.

Lorem Ipsum gets you James Joyce.

My 33 page half-finished novella got Kurt Vonnegut.

For my 300 odd page draft novel:

Section 1 gets PG Wodehouse

Section 2 gets Dan Brown

Section 3 gets David Foster Wallace

Section 4 gets Douglas Adams

Section 5 gets HP Lovecraft

Section 6 gets Daniel Defoe

Section 7 gets Karl Vonnegut

Section 8 gets George Orwell

Section 9 gets Masamune Shirou Karl Vonnegut again.

Darn, until the last one I had managed a differant author for every section. Now if only I could do that intentionally:smalltongue:

My whole novel somehow fits in that box and gives me James Joyce.

My attempt at writing a romantic date also gets James Joyce.

The piece I had to write to get into a university and failed was written like dan brown. Oh well.

[afroakuma]

...wow, I apparently write like J.K. Rowling.

Maybe I should run off and get a book deal. :smallbiggrin:

[Closet_Skeleton]

Okay...

At the Mountains of Madness was written by George Orwell.

The Colour out of Space was written by Steven King.

The Rats in the Walls was written by Dan Brown.

The Call of Cthulu gets HP Lovecraft.

As does The Shadow over Innsmouth.

Pickman's Model gets David Foster Wallace.

I wonder which two stories the generator bases its Lovecraft analysis off...

J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla gets Edgar Allen Poe. I guess it can identify Gothic then. Dracular's Guest is recognised as being by Bram Stoker. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde gets Stevenson, but they probably based their analysis off it.

[Superglucose]

Blog posts return JD Sallinger, less serious but more formal stuff returns some guy I've never heard of, David Foster Wallace?

I wish I had access to my serious writing because I'm curious about that. Oh. Edgar Allen Poe?

Well I might try one other then. Anne Rice? Margaret Atwood? Who are these people? :smallsigh:

[Morph Bark]

Well I might try one other then. Anne Rice? Margaret Atwood? Who are these people? :smallsigh:

Anne Rice is a writer of vampire stories, the romance kind, I believe. Margaret Atwood I dunno, but I got her as a result too. Someone I know told me she's a good writer, and she's won a bunch of prizes with books in a large variety.

[Cristo Meyers]

Well I might try one other then. Anne Rice? Margaret Atwood? Who are these people? :smallsigh:

Like M-Bark said, Rice is a vampire story writer. She's actually the one largely responsible for popularizing vampires as beautiful, sympathetic creatures tormented with a curse rather than monsters like Dracula. She created Lestat and Louis (Interview with the Vampire).

Atwood is a contemporary feminist writer. Don't know much about her. Her best known work is probably The Handmaid's Tale.

[SolkaTruesilver]

Apparently, I am a mix of Dan Brown and Arthur C. Clark...

...

I can get behind that :smallcool:

[Da Pwnzlord]

I got a random excerpt from a Dan Brown book and it said he rights like James Joyce. Hmmm.


Has anyone else tried putting in stuff from the authors it says people write like?

[Closet_Skeleton]

Atwood is a contemporary feminist writer. Don't know much about her. Her best known work is probably The Handmaid's Tale.

I think among nerds Atwood is known mostly for refusing to admit that her novels are science fiction (in fact some of them definately aren't but others basically are) since apparently using a theoretical idea of a future society to examine a political/philosophical idea is completly alien to science fiction, which is all silly and pointless.

Thanfully that's a simplification of what she actually said. Pity the same doesn't go for Terry Goodkind.

[Math_Mage]

My six most recent blog posts:
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace
Isaac Asimov
Margaret Atwood
Dan Brown
Daniel DeFoe

and a short story I'm rather proud of:
Douglas Adams
:smallbiggrin:

[Aidan305]

Hmm, it appears that my Fireborn campaign summaries are in the style of David Foster Wallace (Whom I had never heard of before today),while a couple of pieces of fiction or a campaign I did a few years back came up as James Joyce and J.K. Rowling.

An interesting set of results.

[TheLaughingMan]

Wrote a short story with no meaning and got H.P. Lovecraft.


I'm not sure how I should feel about this.


Edit: Wrote "****" five times in all caps and got William Gibson.

[Alindo]

I write like dan brown too, according to this. I don't even like him. I think it tells half of those who try that they write like dan brown.

[Flickerdart]

I write like dan brown too, according to this. I don't even like him. I think it tells half of those who try that they write like dan brown.
Maybe that's because most people, like Dan Brown, just aren't very good?

[chiasaur11]

Maybe that's because most people, like Dan Brown, just aren't very good?

But most folks are bad in different ways. Don't make much sense on that assumption.

Besides, Brown is bad, but the more obvious mistakes should get Cooper or Meyer.

[king.com]

But most folks are bad in different ways. Don't make much sense on that assumption.

Besides, Brown is bad, but the more obvious mistakes should get Cooper or Meyer.

Does that mean the X-com aliens are really descendants of Jesus?

Im Neil Gaiman apparently.

[Remmirath]

Prologue of a story I'm in the process of writing - Bram Stoker.
Chapter one of the same story - David Foster Wallace.
Short story - Ray Bradbury.
Essay - H.P. Lovecraft.
Character background 1: Jedrazeldariset - James Fenimore Cooper. William Shakespeare.
Character background 2: Zor'taj Chaon-Ka - Neil Gaiman. Edgar Allen Poe.
Character background 3: Kyoxonpharazet - J.R.R. Tolkien. Mario Puzo.
Character background 4: Mephrazur Darkclaw - Dan Brown. Dan Brown. Consistent. :smallannoyed:
Character background 5: Len'thiré V'shkor - Harry Harrison. Ursula K. Le Guin.

I did two for the character backgrounds, because the way our group does it is that they are written as an interview/questionnaire. The first one was only the longest answer, and the second was the whole thing, questions included.

If you believe this, then, I write like a completely different person every time - which would be good for the character backgrounds, since I try to make those sound different, but the others? Not so much.

Of course, I don't believe it is accurate, but it is amusing. :smallbiggrin:

[Platinum_Mongoose]

It occurs to me that changing the algorithm so that every result comes up "Stephanie Meyer" would be the prank of the century.

...And possibly lead to the untimely suicides of many aspiring writers...

[Lioness]

A short recount I wrote a while ago got Lovecraft.

[Winthur]

I copied a fragment of Light And Dark The Adventures of Light Yagami (notably, the one in the spoiler), and got David Foster Wallace.

And one of my longer posts here got the Raymond Chandler rating.

While a fragment of one of my posts in one of the many succession games in Civ4, particularly the post with a whole lot of game slang, got the... William Shakespeare rating.

Dark looked exactly the same as Light except that he had black hair and was dressed like Mello (but Light hadn't met mello yet so he didn't know that ;-) ). He got up and walked across the room.

"Hi bro! I'm Dark!" he said lolling and offered his hand to shake.

"How could you not tell me about this!" Light shouted like mad.

"We sent him to a top secret orphanage in Whales (its a town in England) where he would learn to be the next L. We can't tell anyone because its top secret and kira might find out and Kira might try to kill him" his mom said.

Light was crazy and punched table.

[TFT]

I found this (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_web_i_write_like) article on yahoo about the site. It seems to say many things that people are saying here, like how the idea is focused on more than mechanics.

For me, I got Dan Brown on a short story I wrote :smallsigh:, and Margaret Atwood(Who?) for a couple of chapters of a book I started.

[Flickerdart]

I found this (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_web_i_write_like) article on yahoo about the site. It seems to say many things that people are saying here, like how the idea is focused on more than mechanics.

For me, I got Dan Brown on a short story I wrote :smallsigh:, and Margaret Atwood(Who?) for a couple of chapters of a book I started.
Atwood is a Canadian writer that wrote a lot of depressing stuff in the last century. I don't think she's dead yet but I may be mistaken.

[Athaniar]

First part of my Warcraft fanfic (before revision) was written by Bram Stoker. After revision results in J. K. Rowling. Hey, maybe I'm not that bad after all.

A section about bards from the new D&D setting I'm working on tells me it's like Arthur C. Clarke.

The last four news posts on this site result in, in order, David Foster Wallace, David Foster Wallace again, David Foster Wallace, and finally, David Foster Wallace. Don't really know who he is, but apparently the Giant writes like him.

TVTropes's article on Lampshade Hanging (sans quotes and examples) was apparently written by H.P. Lovecraft. Oddly enough, the article on Eldritch Abomination is by Poe.

EDIT: And this post is by Shakespeare.

[TheLaughingMan]

Dark looked exactly the same as Light except that he had black hair and was dressed like Mello (but Light hadn't met mello yet so he didn't know that ;-) ). He got up and walked across the room.

"Hi bro! I'm Dark!" he said lolling and offered his hand to shake.

"How could you not tell me about this!" Light shouted like mad.

"We sent him to a top secret orphanage in Whales (its a town in England) where he would learn to be the next L. We can't tell anyone because its top secret and kira might find out and Kira might try to kill him" his mom said.

Light was crazy and punched table.

God I love that fanfic.

[tomandtish]

Ah, happens.

Yeah, Dan Brown does seem to be a failsafe answer, so...

I really hope it doesn't indicate anything.

Haven't read the whole thread, so don't know if anyone tried this one. I entered 5 paragraphs of Dan Brown exactly, except using different names (to make sure the names didn't trigger anything)

The result:

Dan Brown writes like Ian Fleming.

Entering the same text w/o alteration results in Dan Brown writing like Dan Brown.

[Byrnbot08]

I put in a part of my story. It said I wrote like Ian Fleming.

I don't know if that's good. It worries me.

[Fifty-Eyed Fred]

Putting in several chapters of a novel I'm working on, I write like Jonathan Swift. That's not bad, I suppose. In fact, considering it's a satire, that's actually rather good.

[Jan Mattys]

I apparently write like Isaac Asimov.

[shadow_archmagi]

So, according to the article, it works along the same lines as software filters.

Thus, favorite keywords tend to turn up favorite authors.

Thus "goddamn" probably gives you massive Salinger Points.

[The Glyphstone]

So, according to the article, it works along the same lines as software filters.

Thus, favorite keywords tend to turn up favorite authors.

Thus "goddamn" probably gives you massive Salinger Points.

oddly not. One line of nothing but that word gives me David Foster Wallace. Two lines or more gives me William Gibson (eh?).

[Eldan]

Yeah, I've noticed that. Repeating the same word different amounts of time gives different authors.

[Sneak]

I used three different pieces of creative writing and one very long forum post from Friendly Banter.

I got David Foster Wallace for the post and for one creative piece, and H.P. Lovecraft for the other two.

[Zaydos]

Okay:
My D&D stuff gets Arthur C. Clarke (opening post of a PBP), and Ursula K. LeGuin (character backstory).

My short stories get:
My first story gets me J. K. Rowling.
Ursula K. LeGuin (the two written on the same day and inspired by Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories)

The first chapter of my overly long pokemon fanfic: William Gibson... apparently he doesn't write well.

The chapter I actually liked about the story: John Joyce.

My other abortive pokemon fanfic (told from a pokemon PoV) gets J.R.R. Tolkien for the first chapter, and L. Frank Baum for the second (and then I never finished it).

My creative writing final project: J. K. Rowling. As it was a story about a child and a magical world with fantastic fairies this wasn't surprising (I also actively tried to write more like J. K. Rowling and less like older fantasy greats like Fritz Leiber, Ursula K. LeGuin, and J.R.R. Tolkien).

So make of that what you will.

[Leliel]

Hm.

When writing first person, I am Dan Brown.

When in third person, I am HP Lovecraft.

When hamming it up, I am...Douglas Adams.

Huh?

[Terry576]

The BitP:R game gave me "Stephen King".

As does my paragraph for 'Breeding for Dummies' from a Pokemon thread.

Whereas, my story I was writing a long time ago, is "Dan Brown".

FFFFUUUUUUUU-

PS: I read the title, and my first thought was "Well I write like a damp cloth."

This Post writes like "Kurt Vonnegut".

And one of my shorter PBP posts is "Stephenie Meyer".

I need to change my writing style.

Fast.

And this quote from Terry Pratchett:

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

writes like David Foster Wallace.

Another quote from T. Pratchett is Isaac Asimov.

[Zaydos]

And one of my shorter PBP posts is "Stephenie Meyer".

I need to change my writing style.

Fast.



I got Stephenie Meyer when I just kept hitting random keys for a minute or two... I told my friends this including that explanation... they still laughed at me.

[BRC]

I copied a random Modern Fantasy thing I wrote and got Issac Asimov.

I copied Graveyard Shift (From Ishka, if people here are familiar with that project) and got James Joyce.

[chiasaur11]

I got Stephenie Meyer when I just kept hitting random keys for a minute or two... I told my friends this including that explanation... they still laughed at me.

Never give your friends ammunition without setting them up for a worse fall. Trust me.

[Lord Loss]

This Poem:

The Storm

The mast was weak and the sail held high
The crew was ready, prepared to die
The clouds they billowed in the night-sky

Men said their prayers and damned their fate
Alas for them it was too late
The heavens temper they could not satiate

First came the Thunder, Lightning and Rain
But this was only the start of their pain
Poseidon would not himself restrain

Then the waves came and struck the boat
Enveloping it, a big wet coat
In his last instants the captain wrote
Within his journal, a final note

Farewell.


Tells me I write like Daniel Defore, Whilst a Short Story of mine analyzes as George Orwell. Are these results good?

Also, I put in a poem by robert frost and it registered as Vladimir Nabokov :smallsigh:.

EDIT: That's the draft of the poem. I can't find the final copy :smallfrown:. Oh well.

[Zaydos]

I've found that my simple physical descriptions of D&D characters get me John Joyce. I don't know why.

[Lord Loss]

A CoC Adventure I wrote comes out as... Jack London?

And Writing Cthulhu a bunch of times is like Jonathan Swift? (What?)

[An Enemy Spy]

Dan Brown seems to writing my space fantasy. I guess I'll have to shoehorn in some BS conspiracies.

[BRC]

A CoC Adventure I wrote comes out as... Jack London?

And Writing Cthulhu a bunch of times is like Jonathan Swift? (What?)
It makes sense. Cthulhu would enjoy eating Irish Children

[Ponderthought]

I think Ill add alittle insight to this creatures workings by including my inputed text with its verdicts.

The first paragraph of a post-apocalyptic story:
The apocalypse hadnt turned out the way he thought it would.

He had been under the impression that a nuclear incident would effectively end life on earth, provided there wasnt some sort of cliched high tech bunker system to protect humanity from the fallout. Granted there probably was one, but nobody had let him in on it.

Then again, his experience with atomic disasters had been confined entirely to speculative fiction, so he could be forgiven a few misconceptions.

Verdict: Written like Arthur Clarke

The first bit of a story about caves and a bumbling Victorian gentlemen:
Ambrose was experiencing Rapture.

Rapture is a lovely word on the surface, with wonderful conotations. It often describes a state of ecstasy, joy or revelation. As a proper noun, it is sometimes used to describe a return to paradise.

This was a different form of rapture.

What Ambrose Blackmoore was experiencing was more like an intense hysteria. The human psyche can only handle so much darkness, so much closeness, before it begins to crumble. The miners that discovered this malady named it Rapture, after a member of their group who broke under the pressure of weeks underground and began ranting and raving about angels and colored lights.

Ambrose had felt the break coming the instant the guards had heaved the gates shut behind him, cutting of the dim light of their lanterns. He had been in denial during the trip to the Mouth.
Verdict: Lovecraft.

The poorly written opening of a detective story:
It's eleven thirty nine, on an eriely quite night in Torton, Nothport, and Im helping an old woman look for her lost lap dog.

Its not as bad as it sounds, said old woman turned out to be independantly wealthy, and is paying me an obscene hourly rate, but this still dosent feel like the kind of case a professional detective should be wasting his time on. I have bad guys to catch mysteries to unravell..and Im out looking for goddam Fifi or
Verdict: David Foster Wallace.

And for reference, a rather dry section of geographic information from an old setting I made up (Warning, long and boring):
Zhao is the land of the White Tiger, the northwestern province of the empire, landlocked and mountainous. The people of the Tiger are fierce and clever, making their living off a lucrative mining and metalworking industry. The province is home to some of the empires most talented swordmasters, engineers and artisans, and is said to produce the finest steel in the empire, along with controlling the empires supply of Jade, a mineral vital for any interaction with spirits.


Wa is the land of the Black Turtle, the northeastern province of the empire, rocky and cold, with many miles of coastline. The people of the Turtle are easygoing, but strong and willful, living off the fur trade and whaling industry their lands provide. The province offers little in the way of agriculture, and has given rise to some of the greatest hunters and sailors in the empire, as well as a strong warrior culture. Relations between Wa and its neighbors is somewhat cool, due to it's peoples past tendency toward piracy, but the demand for furs and whale oil is slowly improving the provinces reputation.


Kalinda is the land of the Azure Dragon, the southeastern province of the empire. Its land are lush and temperate, even tropical in the coastal regions. The people of the Dragon are often considered somewhat flighty, but are capable of surprising wisdom. They typically make their livings via trade or agriculture, and also boast a robust fishing industry. The province produces a large amount of the empires food and textiles, and its tropical regions are a popular location for winter homes and tourism.


Yavana is the land of the Vermilion Bird, the southwestern province of the empire, made up dense jungle. The people of the Bird are calm and graceful, but surprisingly passionate. The province is often considered the spiritual heart of the empire, with hundreds of temples and monasteries dotting its verdant landscape. The regions chief exports are rare jungle herbs, exotic animals and religious texts.

Verdict: Jonathan Swift?

Conclusions: None. I am baffled.

[Zaydos]

Newest character fluff (the quick of it is: idealist has special powers, finds out they're because of family pact with demons, gets forced into cult, loses ideals and runs away, slowly going mad while trying to reclaim ideals): Mary Shelley.

Verdict: well... I don't know.

Edit: The footnotes on his fears gets me

David Foster Wallace.

[Ponderthought]

Newest character fluff (the quick of it is: idealist has special powers, finds out they're because of family pact with demons, gets forced into cult, loses ideals and runs away, slowly going mad while trying to reclaim ideals): Mary Shelley.

Verdict: well... I don't know.

Actually I can kind of see that from the synopsis.. Idealist=Victor Frankenstein, powers = knowledge, pact with demons = realization of his terrible mistake in re-animating the dead, and so forth..

Edit: Dammit all, now I have to find my copy of Frankenstein, i havent read it since highschool...

[ExtravagantEvil]

I posted a particularly poor grammar backstory as was the point, I commonly go about writing backstories from proper character perspective, and stating past jobs and connotations of their personal tales. I apparently got Kurt Vonnegut, from this:
Huh...I Mulgor Donnavan, M.D. (Magical Doctorate). Mulgor was young, raised in human city by human mother. She kind, she treat Mulgor nice. Mulgor always want to be warrior like father. He was strong, but never 'round. I like father when he come and play once a while. I tell mother "I want be warrior like father, and join guard". She tell Mulgor no. Mulgor not be like "Belligerent Pig of man" (that make me feel sad). She make me go to wizard school. I want to be a soldier, but she said "Magic is where the money is, you know you need to do this". So Mulgor go to wizard school, get Major in Transdimensional Hopping, Minor in Energy Dispersal, and pass with magical doctorate and leave, Mulgor go and travel, find a way to live Mulgor dream, and find father again. Maybe Mulgor be big and learn to fight like father. Just maybe...

[Concrete]

I got:
Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk (http://persistant.deviantart.com/art/Broken-city-Chapter-1-135785972?q=gallery%3Apersistant+sort%3Atime+in%3A literature%2Fprose&qo=9)(Neat!)

H.P. Lovecraft (http://persistant.deviantart.com/art/To-achieve-the-dream-of-the-154981970?q=gallery%3Apersistant+sort%3Atime+in%3A literature%2Fprose&qo=2) (Yay!!!)

Stephenie Meyer (http://persistant.deviantart.com/art/Waiting-154013312?q=gallery%3Apersistant+sort%3Atime+in%3A literature%2Fprose&qo=3)(NOOOOO!!!!):(

[Zaydos]

I got:
Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk (http://persistant.deviantart.com/art/Broken-city-Chapter-1-135785972?q=gallery%3Apersistant+sort%3Atime+in%3A literature%2Fprose&qo=9)(Neat!)

H.P. Lovecraft (http://persistant.deviantart.com/art/To-achieve-the-dream-of-the-154981970?q=gallery%3Apersistant+sort%3Atime+in%3A literature%2Fprose&qo=2) (Yay!!!)

Stephenie Meyer (http://persistant.deviantart.com/art/Waiting-154013312?q=gallery%3Apersistant+sort%3Atime+in%3A literature%2Fprose&qo=3)(NOOOOO!!!!):(

What did you write to get Stephenie Meyer? I got that once... with random keyboard smashes.

[Concrete]

What did you write to get Stephenie Meyer? I got that once... with random keyboard smashes.

Check the link.
Also: Derp (http://derp.cheezburger.com/tag/stephanie-meyer/)

[Zaydos]

Ah I got used to the links being about the authors. Won't let me look till I join Deviant Art.

[Concrete]

Ah I got used to the links being about the authors. Won't let me look till I join Deviant Art.


Dang.
Then I must improvise.

Waiting.

They are late.
Far too late.
I know that I should get out of here, just drive off and hope that they can make it home on foot. It would be the smart thing to do.
I were never all that smart…
At least the heater is working. Looking out over the plain, the snow is more like sand than anything else. As if someone had placed me in the Sahara desert and had the courtesy to replace the sand with cocaine. It must be more thirty below out there.
I tell myself that if they're not here within the hour, they simply have to be dead. It calms me down. A deadline is a deadline. No matter how literal.

The hour pass. Then another.
I wait. I was always too nice for my own good. Damnit, I don't even like those bastards…

If the radio weren't dead, I wouldn't realize that the wind was picking up, but aside from the droning heater it's the only sound there is.
Within ten minutes, the plain is gone. Everything is gone. I'm alone in a world not larger then the jeep, surrounded by a white, roaring nothing.
I turn on the GPS, I start the engine.
They are dead. We should never have come here. We should have listened to Anders.
He was always the smart one.

I drive for two hours, with nothing to go by but the little red arrow that's supposed to be me, and the vibrations telling me that I'm still on the road.
It's dark now. The night comes so quickly this time of the year.
I can barely see ten feet in front of me, and what I see is just a solid white wall, lit up by my headlights.
It takes me another half an hour to realize that I should have reached civilization by now.
It takes me another to get scared.
According to the little white arrow, I'm home.
Looking outside, I'm nowhere.
I stop the car. I turn of the engine. I climb over in the back and start up the kerosene heater.
I wrap my coat around me and try to sleep as well as one could in the far to small back seat.
I do not dream.
I wake up the next morning nothing but the hissing of the heater.
Looking outside I see the plain reaching out for miles in every direction. The sky is covered with thick, gray clouds.
The GPS proudly announces I'm home.
I get out. There is no road, just the packed snow.
I start driving, I leave no tracks.
I drive for three hours before I see any sign of man.
A car. Some kind of jeep. A man inside it, dead.
Shot through the head. Smiling like a retard.
I know his face.

---

They are late.
Far too late.
I know that I should get out of here...

[Knaight]

I put in a few paragraphs of Jack Vance and got David Foster Wallace. Another few generated Charles Dickens. Furthermore, some deliberate and awful "romance" material I quickly wrote for the test generated Stephen King, slightly more tasteful stuff produced for further testing received William Gibson instead. Its a fun toy, but the accuracy is horrible.

[Turcano]

In my travels on the internet, I've discovered the purpose of this text analyzer: apparently it's a piece of advertising for a vanity press (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012502.html#012502).

[Concrete]

So, there are people who actually trust that page?
How depressing...

[Knaight]

Or people were trying to screw with it. In my case, I wrote some stuff that was about as awful as I could make it for the express purpose of generating a horrible writer. The site seems to have been built to avoid insulting anyone who puts their writing in it.

[Zaydos]

Or people were trying to screw with it. In my case, I wrote some stuff that was about as awful as I could make it for the express purpose of generating a horrible writer. The site seems to have been built to avoid insulting anyone who puts their writing in it.

Depends upon your definition of an insult, I can think of some published authors I'd consider it insulting to be compared to.

[SaintRidley]

My four published poems.

The first, a sonnet. It gave me Ursula K. Le Guin.

The second, a poem about sniffing an octopus. It gave me Chuck Palahniuk.

The third, a poem about Munch's The Scream. It gave me Arthur Conan Doyle.

The fourth, a longer poem about the gods being trapped by the act of their creation. It gave me H.P. Lovecraft.

[Seraph]

bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb


You write like WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!


yeah, I think its broken.

[Knaight]

Massive amounts of Hamlet generated James Joyce. Excellent.

[Gamerlord]

Apparently I write like Douglas Adams, how it got that answer I do not know.
EDIT: Apparently I write like J.K. Rowling as well. Odd.

[Zaydos]

The fourth, a longer poem about the gods being trapped by the act of their creation.

I read this sentence and thought that it sounded like something out of Lovecraft.

[Szilard]

So I put a few chapters from two of the books I'm working on. One of them got a few people I don't know. My other book got Douglas Adams, Dan Brown, Makr Twain, and some chick I don't know. But Adams and Twain are enough to give my ego a boost.:smallcool: Then my short story entitled "Wizards and Time Travel" aptly got J. K. Rowling. :smalltongue:

Of course, with something like this, one has to be skeptical.

[mangosta71]

@Seraph: I got the same result when I filled the box with "Herp Derp" copied and pasted a couple hundred times. So, apparently the difference between William Shakespeare and Stephanie Meyer is that old Willy capitalizes.

[Zaydos]

I just put the descriptions of 10 dragons I've made over the course of the last 2 or 3 days in and I got:
Fungal Dragon: Poe.
Far-Spawn Dragon (written in Literary Agent style in imitation of): H. P. Lovecraft.
Ashwood Dragon (fluff inspired by ents): J. R. R. Tolkien
Elan Dragon: David Foster Wallace.
Electrum Dragon: James Joyce.
The other 5: Ursula K. LeGuin.

Honestly I tend to get LeGuin, Tolkien, Rowling, and Lovecraft with writing I'm happy about (and the last when I'm consciously imitating him) and David Foster Wallace or James Joyce with stuff that feels badly made.

[Rob Roy]

I posted the sum of everything I've wrote on these forums and it got me George Orwell and since I don't really like his books I'm torn on whether to be ashamed or not. Though it's a program where I could post

bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
dddddddddddddddddd

and still get Shakespeare so I'm not worried.

[Fifty-Eyed Fred]

Threadlock in 3, 2, 1...

(Apparently, that sentence was written in the fashion of William Shakespeare...)

[cho_j]

A short story of mine that's been polished to as near perfection as I'll make it in this lifetime was Cory Doctorow writing, a rough draft of a chapter in a novel was Dan Brown-esque, and the paper I wrote for class tomorrow is Lovecraftian. So... this doesn't analyze your writing style well at all, does it?

[Eldan]

It doesn't at all, really. From what we've seen, it just looks if you ahve certain words in your text. Look at some of the worst examples further up. Random letters = Shakespeare, and so on.

[mikeejimbo]

It's really too bad that the site is a scam. I feel like a program that actually tried to analyze authors like that would be quite interesting.

[Lolzords]

Hrm, according to this I write like James Joyce, whoever that is. :smallconfused:

[The Tygre]

Hrm, according to this I write like James Joyce, whoever that is. :smallconfused:

*slaps*

Bad! Bad poster! Go to your library and think about what you've said!

Seriously though, James Joyce was the author of Ulysses, not to be confused with The Odyssey.

Also, fun fact, inputting DUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRR DURP DURP DURP gives you J. D. Salinger.

[Lord Seth]

It's really too bad that the site is a scam. I feel like a program that actually tried to analyze authors like that would be quite interesting.How is it a scam? There's no money or goods being traded and it doesn't ask for personal information or try to sell you anything. At most it's just a little misleading. "Scam" is a pretty heavy word to throw out and this certainly is not a scam.

[Selrahc]

How is it a scam? There's no money or goods being traded and it doesn't ask for personal information or try to sell you anything. At most it's just a little misleading. "Scam" is a pretty heavy word to throw out and this certainly is not a scam.

The site is running advertisements about self publishing a book, while on a site that tells you your writing is like one of a number of famous authors. It's not really a scam, but it is pretty close.