Need a break from your book? Want to keep thinking about writing rather than doing writing? Have I got the spot for you!
My oldest son sent me this website (“I Write Like”) a while back, and I have shared it with various writer-friends of mine. Everyone has enjoyed it thoroughly. You will probably bookmark it, too. It’s pretty addictive.
This website categorizes your writing style by comparing your prose to that of published authors. Here’s how it works.
Go to one of your manuscripts and choose a segment. I don’t know the limitation for number of words, but I know I have put in quite a few paragraphs. Select by highlighting. Click on “copy” from your “edit” menu.
Log in to http://iwl.me and “paste” your text in the box provided. Then click on “Analyze” at the bottom. Presto bingo! The site matches your writing style to an author and names the author you write like. I was pretty pleased that one of my manuscripts matched Stephen King. Wahoo! (Can I put that in a query letter? Hmm. Probably not.)
However, another manuscript matched me with an author I had to google to find out who he was and what he wrote. Still. I did match a published author with each manuscript segment I entered, and no surprise, since I write in a variety of genres, I had a bunch of different authors I matched.
It is better to match an author unfamiliar to me than to have the website come back and say, “Sorry. We could not find a match for your search query.” What could be a better boost for your ego than to say, "My writing is in the style of James Joyce"?
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