Came across a neat little website thanks to a link from Rob Sawyer: it’s called I Write Like and it’s a statistical analysis tool that analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.
So I ran samples from the various stories I’ve had published and here’s what came out (note: these are listed in order of publication):
BORROWED TIME
Not really sure I write like Dan Brown I decided to do a little test and try a couple of different sections from one story:
SATURN IN G MINOR
Opening section…
David Foster Wallace
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
The middle technobabble exposition bit…
Okay, that’s making more sense! So I stayed away from dialogue heavy sections for the test (on the theory that dialogue is what tripped the Dan Brown analysis–though I went back and tested a non-dialogue section of Borrowed Time and it still came out Dan Brown, so…)
CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS
David Foster Wallace
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
CLADISTICS
David Foster Wallace
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
So everything I tested was published stuff and it seems like I was growing in skill (yes, I realize this is hardly a scientific or necessarily reliable test, but still it’s nice to think…) so I decided to test something unpublished, something I’ve just recent finished work on and which is now out for consideration:
UNPUBLISHED STORY
Cool! Could it be that I’m making actual progress?? 😉
– S.
Writing like Dan Brown is not necessarily a bad thing…. how many books has he sold? 😉
Oh, I’m not saying I don’t want Dan Brown’s SUCCESS. How else am I supposed to afford my gold house and rocket car?
But I was just saying I hope I’m a better WRITER than Dan Brown is–his prose is just awful. Can’t even read it.
What Dan Brown does incredibly well is STORYTELLING, which is different than the actual writing (word choice, sentence construction, imagery, etc). If there’s one area to emulate him in, it’s definitely storytelling!
– S.