Insight – Page 149

I recently finished reading ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King. Not remarkable in itself, except I read it in three sittings. It was enjoyable, entertaining, educational and eye-opening. I don’t want to go overboard with E’s so I’ll stop there. As a guide and reference for the craft I would suggest it is also excellent. Okay I’ll E’s off the description now.

He informs the reader early on that it isn’t a long book and in keeping with that, his remarkable autobiography takes up less than half of it. A writer’s profile is usually fifty to one hundred words on a flyleaf with a complimentary photo. This book is good in my opinion because it takes you inside the writer’s thought process before you read anything of his theories on writing. Given his status in the international storytelling market his theories are worth reading and remembering.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough for any level of writer.

Today I visited a site that I would like to think, did what it said on the tin. The site is ‘I Write Like’ which according to the opening statement, provides analysis of writing to suggest which famous writers you closely match in style.

It’s simple enough to use. You download several paragraphs of your own writing from short story or novel of any genre… press ‘analyze’ and within seconds a result is given.

I tested the idea with three different pieces and in each case used at least five paragraphs. I was matched up with three different writers. I used different pagragraphs from the same three stories and got similar results, which although not conclusive I thought was reasonable.

In summary my autobiography and a military adventure were written in the style of William Gibson, best known for his science fiction and short stories. One of my short story thrillers was written in the style of Dan Brown (‘The Da Vinci Code’) and another was in the style of James Joyce the Irish novelist and poet. I was pleased to see that my only attempt so far at surreal writing matched me up to none other than Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey).

If anyone should be interested in this idea I’ve listed the link on my ‘blogroll’ to the right. I intend to test my future work against the analysis to see if (a) I maintain the same style comparisons with similar genre and, (b) if my first session was total fluke. It may all be simple analysis of vocabulary but that will stand out if I continue to check. If nothing else it’s a fun word search.