Legal Writing

Do You Write Like Stephen King?

By Maeve Maddox

You may have already been to the site that offers to analyze your writing and tell you whose style it resembles.

Created by 27-year-old Russian blogger and software developer Dmitry Chestnykh, the site operates with an algorithm similar to a spam detector. The current version is based on the English texts of 50 authors including Agatha Christie, Dan Brown, and H.P. Lovecraft. You paste an extract from your blog or current fiction project into a text box and hit Submit. An instant response gives you the name of an author whose style your submission resembles.

Readers are already shooting it down, of course. If the tweet I read is to be believed, Margaret Atwood submitted a sample of her writing and found out that she writes like Stephen King.

I too write like Stephen King. At least that’s who came up when I submitted my DWT post “Let the Word Do the Work.” A sample of my PhD dissertation about Joan of Arc and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on the other hand, apparently resembles the style of Edgar Allan Poe.

Rocket science it’s not. But it is fun. Give it a whirl. Then get back to work.

I Write Like text analyzer
Interview with Dmitry Chestnykh

Full post as published by Daily Writing Tips on July 27, 2010 (boomark / email).