I read about the "I write like" site on author Mark Coggins' blog site—Riordan's Desk, and just had to try it for my own books.
First up, the opening two pages from Silver Lies:
Well, that's interesting. How about the opening to Iron Ties?
Really?
Okay, let's try Leaden Skies:
Nobokov gain??
That's pretty strange. The only thing I've read by Nabokov is Lolita, a novel that made/makes me wince. However, Wikipedia says that Lolita "exhibit(s) the love of intricate word play and synesthetic detail that characterised all his works." I like word play, definitely, and synesthetic detail gets a thumbs up from me.
Time for an experiment.
For the first evaluation of Silver Lies (above), I'd put in just a portion of the prologue. Let's try the whole prologue (luckily, I have all the beginnings for all of my books available to read on my website. Makes copy/paste easy). To my surprise, adding those extra pages nixes Mary Shelley and instead...
Now that's a bit daunting.
I surely hope they mean James Joyce as in The Dubliners, and not James Joyce as in Ulysses (a book one needs a map, a trail of string, and a course in Joyce to figure out).
Okay. I have Book Four underway. Gotta check that out.
(I'm almost afraid to do this.)
Let's try the first chapter. (Please, oh please, not some incredibly hard-to-read author of the distant past...)
Hmmmm. My experience with Silver Lies makes me leery of this pronouncement, based as it is on just a few pages.
I decide to plug in the first three chapters, and see what happens.
I guess that means my writing is consistent for Book #4, at least throughout the beginning. I like Vonnegut... or did, when I read him (a long time ago now). Wikipedia describes his "voice" as "characterized by wild leaps of imagination and a deep cynicism, tempered by humanism." I'm not sure why Book #4 brings up Vonnegut instead of Mary Shelley/James Joyce/Vladimir Nabokov. But the words flow and the book takes shape, almost apart from me. Or as Vonnegut said: "So it goes."
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4 comments:
I tried it and got IAN FLEMING! What? Ian Fleming writing cozy mystery about miniatures?
I was afraid to try again.
You were very brave.
And you're such a good writer, some day a writer will try this and get "ANN PARKER" and be thrilled.
Hi Camille!
Ian Fleming?? That's awesome! James Bond with a glue gun! ;-)
Consider it an experiment... Did you check out Mark Coggins' blog post on this?
I tried and got Stephen King. Don't I wish?
What would it say to an actual excerpt from the horror meister himself?
Hi Bob!
You know... that would make a great experiment. Or a passage from Ulysses (James Joyce). It would be fun to see if the "proper writer" pops up!
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