It all began with a question. Or, a request. During my latest round of submissions, I ran across this:
Include a short bio and describe your style.
My style? I don’t know my style. Themes, no problem. Genres, easy. But style?
So I did what any respectable writer does when met with a question like ‘What is my style?’ I asked my friends. Who all came back with different answers.
Then I went to my friend Google–the overly-popular, overly-opinionated friend who always gives me way too much information, but occasionally comes through with a gem. After typing in ‘How to describe my style’ a few academic websites popped up, mostly dealing with college essays, along with a handful of websites offering vague advice like ‘write consistently’, and the website I Write Like . . . which doesn’t define a style, but does claim to analyze your writing and compare it to the list of authors in its database. I’m not sure how the algorithm works, but I was willing to give a try.
I plugged in the latest short story I wrote. A cryptic story about a woman who must choose a husband, a ghost and hundreds of empty boots. So who does the site think I write like?
Mario Puzo.
Interesting. Somehow I didn’t get The Godfather vibes when I wrote it (or read it for that matter), but okay.
Next up was a story about a girl who writes on herself that won honorable mention in a contest. My literary twin?
Raymond Chandler.
Never read him, sorry to say.
Time for the big test. I fed the site a chapter in Flameborne, broken into two page segments. Apparently the first two pages I write like Neil Gaiman, then I morph into David Foster Wallace. From him, I start writing like Anne Rice, Mary Shelley and end the chapter on a nice James Joyce note. Wow! Either I am the most scatterbrained, schizophrenic, multi-talented writer on the planet, or something is up with this algorithm.
I should have stopped. Walked away. Clicked the little x button and gone on with my life. But I’m a sucker for these things. I couldn’t stop. If I was great at IT, or statistics, or making my own algorithms, I would have some fantastic statistical data to share with you. Since I’m not, I won’t bore you with all the individual results. As it stands, I did end up with some of the same names showing up repeatedly as I plugged in more and more stories, poems, and blog posts. According to the website, I mostly write like:
David Foster Wallace
Anne Rice
Neil Gaiman
Stephen King
Margaret Atwood (interestingly enough, most of my poetry comes up paired to Atwood)
Lovecraft
My general blog posts resemble Lovecraft, while Jakob’s Journal posts were always paired to Anne Rice. I haven’t read Wallace, or Rice (I did see a vampire movie, though), but I don’t think Gaiman and King sound like Atwood. So what accounts for the differences? I mean, besides the faulty algorithm?
I’m going to go with comments my friends left me about my style.
Friend #1: I’d say you’re more of a storyteller, adapting the style to the story.
Friend #1 is wise and beautiful, and also brews great beer. ‘Style’ boxes are overrated. I do adapt the style to the story, which would account for different styles, or voices. Jakob’s Journal (fantasy, epistolary) sounds completely different from “Bug Out” (speculative dystopian) and “Orbital Extraction“ (sci-fi) sounds nothing like Ashborne (epic fantasy).
Friend #2: Your style… yeah it’s so hard to put yourself in a box like that! You write intricate, fantastical, magical prose. Your poetry (that I´ve read) ranges from fantastical to handling the mundane in unique, fresh ways. You have a strong narrative voice across genres. But yeah that question is tough. Just quote Whitman and say “I contain multitudes.”
Friend #2 is also wise and beautiful. If you ever need advice, I suggest going to her.
The next time someone asks what my style is, I’m not going to worry about boxes, style descriptions, or who I write like. Instead I’m going to say, ‘I’m glad you asked. I contain multitudes.’
If you’d like to go check out the I Write Like website, go have some fun. Let me know who they compare you with.
Cas Blomberg Communications 
I tried it. I write like the author of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk.
I saw the movie, but I’ve never read the book. Do you think you write like him?
“I Write Like”was interesting… I had it scan all the chapters of my latest serial that I just started releasing. The results were that the first chapter was like H. G. Wells and the second Vladimir Nabokov. The third read like Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), which was neat given the story’s subjects. The forth was classified as similar to David Foster Wallace, but the last two chapters both came up as Robert Louis Stevenson! That floored me because reading “Treasure Island” as a boy inspired my love of pirates and that book has been a source of indirect inspiration for this very story. 🙂
Curious, I pasted the whole thing in there and was told that it was like H. G. Wells as was the result for the first chapter. I then removed the first chapter and kept the rest and was told Vladimir Nabokov like the second chapter. And removing the first and second to start with the third resulted in Daniel Defoe. Therefore, I think the analysis only scans a few thousand words or less into the text before making its comparison… That hardly seems thorough, now does it? 😉
Yeah, but what great writers you were compared to! I’ve read some of your stuff and think you have your own voice. Very easy-to-read. Great characters. I wonder if it’s picking up key words? Like pirates and treasure? I don’t know. It was fun =).
Awe, thank you Cas! A lot of my critiquers have been saying the same about my voice and characters of late, so that’s some personal improvement that makes me smile. 🙂
You might be on to something with the key words… but yes, either way it was fun!