Who I Write Like Misanalysis, Take Two.

A friend on one of my groups posted an app that supposedly analyzes your writing and tells you what great author you are similar to.  If you recall, I played with that app in 2010 and came up with hilariously varied results.  I thought I'd try it again.  This time, I'm using one of my favorite scenes from Mind Over Psyche. (Excerpt after the analysis.  Remember, my editor still needs to vette it.)

Try One:  589 words

I write like
J. R. R. Tolkien

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Flattering, but given my penchant for quick scenes vs. Tolkein's more...leisurely...approach, questionable.  I think it's the single long paragraph.

Try Two:  Same piece, 200 words at a time:

I write like
J. R. R. Tolkien

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Well--2 for 2. Interesting.

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Wince. Not a Dan Brown fan...

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

King came up a lot the last time I tried this test, too. 

Try Three: a random chunk out of the middle of the same piece...

I write like
Isaac Asimov

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

There you have it! I am indeed an enigma, an conflagration of many great classic writers. Incidentally, in this paragraph alone...

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Excerpt: 

He used his only tool, his words.  “Tasmae.  I’m your friend.  I know right now, you’ve got a lot of confusing tho—-ungh!”

She hit him.  Hard.

As he folded over, she caught him in the throat with her forearm and pinned him against the wall.  She was tall enough that she could glare into his eyes with only a slight tilt of her head.  “You thought I wouldn’t find out? You thought bringing the Ydrel here would make me trust you?  That you could sing your pretty songs and make me forget my duty to my people?  To the Remembrance?”  She gave a maniacal laugh.  “I know now.  The Barins are a minor threat compared to humans!  Humans, with their wild emotions and too many thoughts.  Too many riddles.  Riddles within riddles, thoughts within thoughts, feelings-within-feelings-within—”  She shook her head, and when she looked up her eyes were shiny with tears.  “You are contagion!” 

She shoved her arm against his throat, and Joshua gagged.  He clutched at her forearm, but he didn’t know how to break her hold.  He couldn’t get a breath to answer her, couldn’t get a breath.  Light and dark flashes dazzled his eyes.

#

“Taz, stop!” Deryl shouted from the doorway as he staggered into the room.  He fought to hold himself together until he could draw her away from his friend.  “Tasmae, please!  It’s not Joshua’s fault.”

“Deryl.”  As Tasmae turned to him her demeanor changed.  First, it softened; gently, almost distractedly, she released Joshua.  He collapsed onto hands and knees, taking in great gulps of air. 

“Ydrel,” she spoke again, and this time, her voice was low and seductive and she sauntered her way to him. He blinked in confusion.

“Taz, don’t,” Deryl whispered, but she didn’t seem to hear him.  Did she even see him?  His eyes flicked to Joshua, but he was still on one knee, a hand braced against the ground, fighting for breath and consciousness.  Leinad and the healer watched, though his muddled mind couldn’t tell if they were fascinated or horrified.

“Ydrel mentor, Ydrel guide,” she breathed as she moved in close, too close.  He backed up until he was against a wall, a mere foot away from the plant, which seemed to turn its blossoms toward them like a plant turns toward the sun.  He tensed and trembled as she leaned into him, her face barely an inch from his.  He could feel her mind flowing against his shields, and he knew if she got through, they were both lost. 

“Please, Tasmae, don’t.”

“Shhh,” she breathed into his ear.  “I understand now, I do.  You tried to warn us.  You showed Gardianju the humans.  The dangers.  She didn’t understand.  But I understand.  No one will hurt you now.”

Her hair was in his face and he could feel its softness, breath in its scent.  It made him dizzy; he couldn’t think.  Dimly, he heard Joshua gasp at Leinad to do something.

Tasmae was placing feather-light kisses on his ear and neck.  Warm shivers moved over his body.  The smell of her hair—

It’s just pheromones, he thought wildly, but it didn’t help.  Her body was too close.  Her mind was too close.  His shields sang.

He would give himself to her.  Give himself to the insanities.  And for a moment, it would be so sweet.  He whimpered, but he didn’t know if it was fear or need.

“It’s all right,” she breathed.  “We’ll protect you.”

“We?” he squeaked.  Run!  Hide! part of him screamed.  “Josh!”

my novel's journey: Discovery: Analyzing the story that doesn't work

Sometimes, I know intuitively where a story is failing--or I can show it to my best friend, Ann Lewis, and she can pinpoint the problem like a Great Detective she's written about. In fact, she did that once with Discovery by helping me realize that the plot was too small and--when I complained I felt like I was writing "Love Boat" in space, she made me see I had underutilized my alien ship. In 2009, that made all the difference in the world.

However, in 2011, I have a bigger plot and a great angle on the ship, but it still doesn't work. This time the mess is in the details, and, with 98,000 words written, it's not intuitively obvious. This time, I need to be the investigator.

I've never had to work this hard on a novel, and truth to tell, I've started this process and put it aside several times, trying to jump ahead to intuition. However, it's not worked, so today, I grabbed a stack of paper, colored pens and the computer.

I started just by scanning the entire manuscript. This helped me get back into the mind of the characters and get the gist of the plot. I could already see places I wanted to make changes; however, I refrained from anything but the most minor of edits. I did make some comments in the margins, though.

Now that I had the story fresh, I started mind mapping. Mind Mapping is really the new term for bubble brainstorming: put the main idea in the center bubble, put related idead in connecting bubbles around, and connect until you get the whole. It can look like this (when neatly done):


Step one is to find THE main idea. Holly Lisle says if you can't tell the theme in a single sentence (a simple one at that), then you don't understand your book. I realize now, it's taken three years for me to understand Discovery, but what a revelation now that I do!

I finally understood my main idea: An alien device enables people to see the damaged parts of their souls. Everything will relate to that. So that was my central circle. From there, it was easy--I made circles for the folks who experienced the device and what their damage was. From those circles, I drew causes, effects, others that they influence or are influenced by.

This gave me my cast of major characters and main subplots. After that, I did the same kind of mind mapping for each character and their particular weakness.

Wow, did this work! Now only was I able to clearly define my story, but I also determined who is an important character and who is secondary (which means I can kill some off), but I also discovered some of the holes in the plots I needed to fill and better yet HOW and WHY they needed filling. If I had wanted to, I could have started from scratch with those ten sheets and written the entire book.

But I had 98,000 words already written! Most of it is really good, too. So rather than start over, I now went to analyze the manuscript itself.

Who I write like...and other mis-analyses

I write like
Stephen King...no, Cory Doctorow...wait, Richard Chadler? David Foster Wallace?

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

In one of my writing groups, a person put up this link http://iwl.me/s/2b568272. It’s supposed to be a writing analyzer that claims to be able to tell you who you write like.

I Write Like checks which famous writer you write like by analyzing your word choice and writing style and comparing them with those of the famous writers.
Learn which writer you write like and get yourself a badge!

Just for kicks, I decided to try it out. Of course, having been a math major and a logic-minded geek in general, I decided to treat it like a statistical experiment.

I put in three sections from three different novels:

Neeta Lyffe: Arthur C. Clark
Magic, Mensa and Mayhem: Stephen King
Live and Let Fly: Stephen King and (because I didn’t believe it and put in a second sample) Dave Foster Wallace

I put in three different sections chosen at random from Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator. According to the analysis, I write like Chuck Palahnuik, Cory Doctorow, and Raymond Chandler. All in the same book.

So I tried it again, with four consecutive sections: Raymond Chandler, Dan Brown (hm, maybe I should rewrite that part), Cory Doctorow, and Stephen King.

Then I took just the King section and divided it into three parts: Stephen King, Cory Doctorow and Stephen King.

Interesting that Cory Doctorow and Stephen King came up so often, especially since I write humorous fantasy.

Just a note: I did put the same bits of text in more than once and would get the same author, so I don’t think it’s just a random generator. It’s just not very good.

Apparently, the only thing it could agree on consistently is that I write like a lot of male writers, which is doubly ironic because another writing analysis program I tried said I have a female voice (which would have disturbed me if I’d believed it, since I was analyzing Vern’s stories.)

Now you know why I have no faith in these analysis machines.