I Write Like.........
by mauichuck on Jul 22, 2010 4:17 PM EDT
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So I guess you've all seen this: http://iwl.me/ (can't get the link command to work) the program that purports to analyze your writing - it uses statistics and everything! - so that you can flatter yourself into thinking that your prose is exactly like some famous writer . And all of us here - myself included - think that we've got some skill; otherwise we wouldn't be posting here at all. So I thought it would be fun to run some of our posts through this literary meat grinder and see what came out. I thought I'd start with Andrew's new opus "Late Returns". And what do you think the "I Write Like" program spit out? Go on, I'll give you a minute to contemplate the possibilities..........why Stephen King of course.
Next, since he's almost inimitable, I took YoDaddyWags profile poem, which goes:
With wife, I own and operate
A small town bookshop: Hamish & Henry.
Before, we had big city life; then we
Threw it in for what has, to date,
Been a smidgen of Mayberry and a drop of country estate.
(One overrun with cats and dogs.)
When it's time to turn from recession's woes,
Or restocking shelves with more deathless prose,
LGT is first among blogs,
Though my BABIP, OPS and WARP studies are mocked by the peeping frogs
Dutifully turned the crank and got................James Joyce. Now ya gotta admit, that's just about perfect.
Then of course I hadda pick out one of my posts, so I chose this one, posted during the 2007 ALCS (cleaned it up a bit since it was posted back before Jay got religion)
WooooooooWeeeeeeeee!!
What an inning!
Yankees fans at the hotel:
The Indians aren't winning - the Yankee's are blowin' it
Torre's an idiot - he shoulda taken Wang our long ago!
The Yankee's bull pen is much better than the Indians!
All those long faces in the Yankee's dugout
And LeBron with the same look on his face as when the Spurs stomped a mud hole in his ass.
Man, this is even better than I imagined!
My [redacted] so hard right now a cat couldn't scratch it!
And got: Bram Stoker!
And what would an analysis of LGT prose would be complete without parsing Jay's work. So I took Jays write up of Game 58 and got: H. P. Lovecraft. Who wouldda guessed?
Any way, I encourage all LGTers to try this on your favorite fan posts and see what you get. It's probably at least as accurate as predicting the future of Lake County prospects
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Ved Mehta, from the age of four. Aldous Huxley and James Thurber were seriously vision-impaired. An illness in his teens cost Huxley his sight for a few years (and kept him out of WWI); there’s controversy about how much of Huxley’s vision he was able to restore using something called the Bates method (about which he wrote The Art of Seeing in1942). Thurber lost an eye as a kid when a brother shot him with a bow and arrow playing William Tell; he was almost completely blind by the 1950s.
John Milton for the last couple of decades of his life. Homer, if he really existed.
by YoDaddyWags on Jul 23, 2010 11:47 AM EDT up reply actions
I tried a recent game recap, and it said David Foster Wallace. I’ll have to try a couple more samples.
Did another 8 recaps, and they all came back Wallace. Hmm.
I guess I need to pick up something of his to see how good this analysis is, since I’ve never read anything by him.
I recommend you start with Infinite Jest, although it’s on the long side. His most famous and easily digestible stuff is in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
Broom of the System, Girl with Curious Hair, Consider the Lobster, Oblivion, and This Is Water are all excellent, as well. Basically, the only book I would dissuade you from starting with is Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
by JulioBernazard on Jul 22, 2010 9:55 PM EDT up reply actions
This Is Water is really short. You could read it in Barnes & Noble. It’s a posthumous book, a commencement speech he gave somewhere. Good place to start.
Warning: it’s heartbreaking (if you dig the author and his work like I do).
by JulioBernazard on Jul 22, 2010 10:21 PM EDT up reply actions
Since it was delivered as a speech, you won’t have a lot of the interesting written maneuvers that he’s known for, but the humor and ideas are great.
by JulioBernazard on Jul 23, 2010 12:26 PM EDT up reply actions
I’m currently reading Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, which is an excellent tour of the history of mathematical treatments of infinity. Very accessible, without sacrificing rigor. It’s really hard to find both at the same time, when it comes to math.
by Logodaedalus on Jul 22, 2010 10:17 PM EDT up reply actions
That’s who I get. Maybe it’s a Ryan thing (my last name in real life).
by kennesawmountainwahoo on Jul 22, 2010 7:16 PM EDT up reply actions
I just did a number of my pieces and got:
H.P. Lovecraft
Kurt Vonnegut
Dan Brown
Raymond Chandler
Plus the Stephen King above. Not sure I follow any of the comparisons.
It makes a certain amount of sense that there’s inconsistency, since your posts are often deliberately ‘stylized’, in different ways from one to another.
Also the algorithm is probably bull, so there’s that.
by Logodaedalus on Jul 22, 2010 9:39 PM EDT up reply actions
Okay, I was curious enough to feed some of my better pieces from 2008 into this thing.
“Losing With the Right Guys” — Chuck Palahniuk
“It’s Official — Sabathia Is A Jackass” — Mark Twain
“Cesspool Scheduled for Demolition” (intro section) — Kurt Vonnegut
Yeah, I’m feeling pretty good about it.
Just finished The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer, due out in October, which centers on a frustrated writer and his efforts to get published. There’s lots of inside jokes about publishing, and certain words have evocative substitutes from literature: a cocktail dress is a golightly; a gun, a canino; nerdy glasses are franzens; a sentence, a hemingway. And vomit: palahniuk.
by YoDaddyWags on Jul 23, 2010 10:41 PM EDT up reply actions
Correction: it’s out now, in paperback.
by YoDaddyWags on Jul 26, 2010 11:13 AM EDT up reply actions
So I typed in “F**k ESPN” out of curiosity. It booted me out.
Credibility check = passed.
Sorry, Chuck, I just couldn’t resist.
by kennesawmountainwahoo on Jul 22, 2010 7:24 PM EDT reply actions
Stephen King for this article on firing Wedge
Cory Doctorow for this article on Wood and Derosa
James Joyce for my rant on Red Sox fans
Kinda all over the place there
As a sanity check, I pasted in the entirety of The Raven .
H.P. Lovecraft.
(On the other hand, it attributed some Lovecraft text to, which is kind of interesting. Maybe there really is similarity there.)
It attributed actual Mark Twain prose (from Life on the Mississippi) to Ursula K. LeGuin, and a piece of Breakfast of Champions to David Foster Wallace.
To be fair, it correctly identified excerpts from Infinite Jest, The Shining, and The DaVinci Code.
Authorship attribution is an interesting statistical problem, but I doubt this is state of the art.
^attributed some Lovecraft text to Poe
by Logodaedalus on Jul 22, 2010 10:14 PM EDT up reply actions
Wait, wait, you’re telling me that some statistical analysis maybe flawed? I stunned, ab-so-lute- lee stunned.
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
Now, now. Again, the problem isn’t with statistical analysis, per se, just that this method is undoubtedly oversimplified. There are pretty good methods out there for this.
by Logodaedalus on Jul 23, 2010 12:58 AM EDT up reply actions
It’s kinda like those Chess programs they’ve been working on for the last 40 years. Early on they computer was lucky to beat a YMCA chess champ. As the programs got better and better, the computer was able to occasionally defeat a Grand Master. Now the programs are nearly – that’s nearly – as good as the best players in the world.
Computer programs are only as good as the programmer. Kinda like Diamond View, Vision whatever the hell it’s called .
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
Hey brick, this:
yeah, but i took that as they don’t need to. but that doesn’t mean they won’t do the other does it? if we’re not looking to shed salary, but money isn’t an object for the other team and they don’t want to shed prospects, something has to give. "Sorry, Omar, we’re just not looking to shed payroll at this time."
Came back as P.G. Wodehouse. That sounds about right.
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
Only as a hitter. As a writer he was a genius.
by MTF on Jul 22, 2010 11:42 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I got a lot of David Foster Wallace. My Dear Diary piece from last year was a notable exception, getting tabbed as Chuck Palahniuk-like. And the Who Killed the Cleveland Indians series was apparently in the style of Dan Brown.
Only if it finally explained him…
I just want to believe.
by mjmarble on Jul 23, 2010 11:45 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I know I saw this somewhere but can’t find it, someone put in “sparkle” 30 times and got Stephenie Meyer.
Steel Nick
I just tried this and got L. Frank Baum
Welcome to the Marte Parte
by tribefan2510 on Jul 23, 2010 3:37 PM EDT up reply actions
Unlikely, given that the only women in the database are Jane Austen, Margaret Atwood and J.K. Rowling.
Margaret Atwood apparently writes like P.G. Wodehouse, by the way.
Putting up different parts of the same writing project, I got Stephen King and Cory Doctorow.
--
"Most players will tell you that even when they're 100%, they're not really 100% ... if that makes sense."
There’s every reason to believe that the IWL site existed in the first instance to drive traffic to scammy vanity publisher Michael Hyatt and Thomas Nelson Publishing. The advertisement has since been removed, replaced with an Amazon affiliate link. It uses the same basic algorithm as spam filters, analyzing nothing more than vocabulary and sentence length to pick one of forty authors.
If you put in the Declaration of Independence, you get Lovecraft. The Revolutionary War would have been more interesting with Cthulhu on our side.
by FredOx on Jul 23, 2010 3:31 PM EDT reply actions 2 recs
Cthulhu would also be awesome as a power-hitting RF, and we wouldn’t have to worry about mandatory military service obligations.
I put that post through the gizmo. Cory Doctorow. Really.
by YoDaddyWags on Jul 23, 2010 10:45 PM EDT up reply actions
I WRITE LIKE DID NOTHING WRONG.
Steel Nick
by nickjs21 on Jul 24, 2010 5:18 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Plugged in song lyrics:
Let it Be -Bram Stoker
Sympathy for the Devil -Ian Fleming
Day in the Life -Raymond Chandler
Baba O’ Reily -Margaret Atwood
Dream On -Ursula K. Le Guin
And the real gem:
Three Little Birds -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
God I love this website
Welcome to the Marte Parte
So, just for the hell of it and since he won’t return my emails, I ran Scott Raabs latest piece through the program and got………..Dan Brown! Hysterical
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
Little does.
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
by mauichuck on Jul 23, 2010 11:47 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I got Mario Puzzo, I like it.
I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.
OK, I put this in the grinder:
HORSES THAT CAN PLOW THE FIELD SHOULDN’T BE SOLD TO SAVE SOME MONEY TO GO TO THE COUNTY FAIR.
I have to admire the trades that have dotted the landscape with young talent. But why in the world would you get rid of a pro. True starting pitchers like Cliff, Carl, Jake, Fausto, and others are the guys you build a team around. If ownership and front office want to know why the team has failed to compete consistantly over the last 10yrs, its because they don’t value starting pitchers. Signing position players and a DH to long term deals looked good at the time. But not having the where with all to maintain Quality Pithers is a leason hopefully we won’t repeat. Watching the success of the Atlanta Braves should of pointed the way. Unfortunatly our young full of it GM had it all figured out. If Mr. Shapiro ever wants to build a championship team he needs to understand it take ALONG time to build a solid rotation. Carls quote above:“I’ve been in a lot of their positions. Sometimes you have it, you lose it and you’ve got to regain it. You have to reinvent yourself. It’s just part of growing up in the game of baseball.” Tells it all. Growing up in baseball is not done overnight.
And got Cory Doctorow
And then this:
I went back into my comments and pulled this one for you. It’s right after trading Cliff and Carl.
Let me look into my crystal ball. 2010; Carl pavano holds Tribe scoreless through 7.
Ryan Garko hits walk off home run and Cliff Lee pitchs a 2 hit shut out in interleague play against the Indians. Victor Martinez goes 9 for 12, 3 hrs, 13 rbi’s during a 3 game home stand against the Redsox. One thing we fans can count on is the players that we dump because the bottom line is more important than winning will have plenty to prove. Vote for Change Oct.2009 Good job Justin. Posted on Cleveland Indians’ Justin Masterson pitches well but bullpen coughs up lead in loss to White Sox on August 09, 2009, 9:34AM. Feel free to dig through others. pages 32to 33 are around the times you question my concerns.
And got Arthur Conan Doyle.
So it appears that some cleveland.com writers write science fiction and others write mysteries. Go figure
Resident LGT results-oriented boob.
But not having the where with all to maintain Quality Pithers is a leason hopefully we won’t repeat.
I have no idea who Cory Doctorow is, but I’m sure he’d be proud.
Though I look right at home, I still feel like an exile
by Manhattan Tribe Fan on Jul 25, 2010 11:32 PM EDT up reply actions
Wait. I just got Dan Gilbert.
by kennesawmountainwahoo on Jul 25, 2010 1:58 PM EDT reply actions 2 recs
I didn’t think it would let you paste in Comic Sans
Where's your crown, KIng Nothing?
by Turkmenbashi on Jul 25, 2010 7:54 PM EDT up reply actions
I was thinking Holden Caulfield.
Old LeBron – he was the primo donna – showed up at the games quite often, but he wasn’t exactly the type that could win a championship. He was a pretty nice player, though. I sat next to him once in the plane from New York and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked him. He had a big nose and his nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and he had on those damn tattoos that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for him. What I liked about him, he didn’t give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy he was. He probably knew what a phony slob he was.
by Ryan on Jul 26, 2010 11:12 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I put in this:
sgbdflkjsabf afblksabflkaf alksfblkbswf aksbf big nose abdkbk abdjavbjd abdjabdjb abdjbajdb monkey buttVladimir Nabokov. Then I put in the word “jackass” thirty times and got Rudyard Kipling.
Hmm, you would thought James Joyce or William Faulkner (as in The Sound and the Fury) would have showed up.
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my monkey butt. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the monkey butt. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a big nose? She did, indeed she did.
I don’t know, I think they nailed it.
by YoDaddyWags on Jul 26, 2010 12:32 PM EDT up reply actions
Didn’t know Humbert Humbert had a monkey butt, did you?
by Logodaedalus on Jul 27, 2010 11:34 AM EDT up reply actions
Обезьяна прикладом: The Complete Stories of Vladimir Nabokov is going to be the publishing sensation of the fall.
by YoDaddyWags on Jul 27, 2010 12:29 PM EDT up reply actions
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