I Write Like...

**dog$** · 17 Jul 2010, 03:44 AM

http://iwl.me/

Copy some of your prose into the field there and find out which famous (or infamous) author you write the most like.

This was mentioned at both the AVClub and on NPR today so I guess it's probably making the rounds on Facebook or has been for a few weeks or something. Of course it's basically horseshit but you might get a laugh out of it so what the hell.

The long post I recently wrote in the Doctor Who was marked as David Foster Wallace. Some story material which I have written gave the result of Ian Fleming, which I guess I can appreciate since it is about gangsters and people doing underworld things in bars and such.

**Compass** · 17 Jul 2010, 03:53 AM

H.P. Lovecraft. lol.

**Mzo** · 17 Jul 2010, 04:00 AM

I also got David Foster Wallace.

This is gay.

**Cowutopia** · 17 Jul 2010, 04:27 AM

From various things, I got:

Salinger
Dan Brown
Poe
Vladimir Nabokov
Douglas Adams (though surprisingly not from an early thing I did that was an attempt to ape Adams, but from a music blog post)
Mary Shelley
Stephen King
Raymond Chandler
James Joyce
William Shakespeare
Arthur Conan Doyle
Neil Gaiman

At the end I put in a couple of forum posts but they all came up like David Foster Wallace.

**Brisco Bold** · 17 Jul 2010, 10:31 AM

David Foster Wallace. I fucking wish.

**rezo** · 17 Jul 2010, 07:33 PM

The problem is that everyone needs to write like somebody. There is no "you are terrible, you write like garbage" option, and so we're all David Foster Wallace. Or J.D. Salinger. Or H.P. Lovecraft. Or L. Frank Baum.