Tuesday, July 13, 2010

I write like...Kurt Vonnegut??


My friend Carolyn Kellogg at the LA Times' fantastic Jacket Copy book blog had the most clever post today. She found a website -- called I Write Like -- where you can enter a few paragraphs of your prose to find out if you write like Hemingway, Chuck Palahniuk or even Bram Stoker. (There are a bunch of other authors ranging from Stephen King to J.K. Rawlings).

Take the five-second test and let me know here how it goes!

If you write like Jane Austen, you win a special prize -- a date with Colin Firth! (Joking.)

I was surprised to learn that I write like Kurt Vonnegut. I had no idea Mr. Vonnegut used so many exclamation points in his prose, but I applaud him!!

xo


(Above photo found at F--- Yeah, Kurt Vonnegut! on Tumblr.)

44 comments:

Carole Poirot said...

Bonjour Tina, I've only just come across your blog and couldn't resist taking the test straight away. Turns out I write like Lewis Carroll...not sure what that says about me ;-) Have a lovely day, Love from London x

Micaela said...

I wanted to be like Austen but alas, I like that I'm like Margaret Atwood: author, poet, critic, essayist, feminist and social campaigner. I'll delight in that result ;)

ps. incidentally, all day today i stayed in my fiance's t-shirt and spent the whole day with Colin Firth's Darcy. le sigh. Since you know him, i figured you might still could set up that date even if i didn't fairly get Austen. ;)

xo

Chelsea said...

Mine was Nebakov! Ha! That's fun. THanks!

rockinkez said...

this was fun! although it turns out i write like stephen king?! hmmm....
i've been reading your blog for a while but have never commented before. so greetings from an english girl in vienna :)

Victoria said...

Wow that test is so fun! I'm Kurt Vonnegut too! That's weird, but probably apt given the amount of exclamation marks in this comment even... anyway thanks for tip!

Victoria

Christine said...

What a great blog! I'm curious to know who I write like. Thanks for the fantastic find!

Tonia said...

Damn, I was hoping to get Atwood, instead got Chuck Palahniuk, H.G. Wells and P.G. Wodehouse depending on which bit of my blog posts I put in. I'm either multi-faceted or not found my own voice yet.
Thanks for this - really has brightened an otherwise sucky day!

Teleri said...

I would have loved to participate but alas, my blog's in German. Maybe I should start to write in English :D

Anonymous said...

eurgh, I am almost too embarrassed to say who I apparently write like. In fact, I AM too embarrassed, so let's just leave it at that.

Fun though .... :)

Breenuh said...

Apparently, I'm a Stephen King-er. Thanks for sharing this. I'm loving Jacket Copy as well!

scatteredthoughtsbybreenuh.blogspot.com

La Bonne Vivante said...

This must be viral, for I took this test yesterday for my blog! Apparently I'm Nabokov! I guess that makes sense....

Fun times!

Carolyn said...

This was lots of fun to do actually.. I write like Stephen King apparently.. like some others above!!!! Suppose he is in for some stiff competition!!!
Sunny greetings from Holland... C

Julia said...

It said I write like Dan Brown and Margaret Atwood... I completely disagree with both. I'd be curious to know what this quiz bases its results on. I'm guessing punctuation and sentence/paragraph length maybe?

RMP said...

Well that was fun! :)....and i managed to waste another 5 minutes of life in my ever triumphal march towards complete procrastination and avoidance of all things Novel writing!

Apparently my epic poetry is a cross between Nabakov and Joyce....in other words completely unintelligible to the common man, and fraught with impenetrable prose. :P....great!, should appeal to the masses then....move over J.K.Rowling and set up a seat for me in the billionaire writers club!!!:P

My Prose style is also Nabokov....which should please Lolita!, as she seems to be my only fan of late.

Short stories ranged between Nabokov, again!....at this rate im going to be tagged a plagiarist!....with a dose of H.P. Lovecraft thrown in for good measure...

cheers Tina :).....now, what else can i do instead of actually writing this book???? :P

Giulia said...

Quite amusing. (& to RMP - we aren't going to aid you in your avoiding serious industry. Get to it! Ahem:)

Thing is...the "cat's" Giulia G. blog ranges from P.G. Wodehouse to Isaac Asmiov (? that's weird) to Atwood to Hemingway to Joyce. Etc.

My blog, wherein I finally use the first person, is much the same though it's mostly Joyce, Nabokov, Atwood, Tolstoy (hey, nice but I doubt it:), H.P. Lovecraft (again, hilariously), Chuck Palahniuk, with blips of Kurt V./Hemingway, & gross--Dan Brown. (Those are the ones that are in editing process, so it tells you something. Also, mention Italy--I do--& there you are, Brown.)

Now to even funnier part. I subscribe to several Austen blogs so I dropped in some actual Austen quotes. Guess what? Dear Jane apparently, acc. to this site, writes like H.G. Wells!

Very amusing, T.

Get back to work, RMP.

ciao-meow,

Susan

emilia. said...

Edgar Allen Poe! ...although I highly doubt our works have any true resemblance :)

XO.

English Muse said...

Guilia,
I would love to see H.G. Wells wearing one of those dreadful regency dresses. such a dreary period in European fashion.

Jonas,
Oh my poor darling did you get Dan Brown? Add a few exclamation marks to see if you're Kurt Vonnegutt instead!

Anonymous said...

George Orwell!! Hmmmm.

Katie said...

Stephen King.... interesting. :) I entered prose from 5 different stories and 4 were Stephen King, one was Jane Austen.

Scentabulous said...

Hmmmm ... James Joyce. Someone I never could bear reading. Interesting. I hope you are doing well, Tina!

Emily A. Blasik said...

Neat! I got Isaac Asimov! Apparently, he was a science fiction writer, which is very ironic because that's my least favorite genre. Haha.

Morgaine Pendragon said...

My daughter found that site yesterday. I tried it out with some of my scribblings. I got: J.K. Rowling, James Joyce, Dan Brown, and Harry Harrison.

Missy said...

This was awesome! Thanks for sharing! Not a stroke for the ego at all to compare my writing to the greats.. (did they have the option - "You write like a 6th grader")..haha

Here's where I came up:
My ridiculous short stories were supposedly like Douglas Adams

My blog was like Margaret Atwood

And in private (my journal) I'm a mix of Isaac Asimov and Vladimir Nabokov

Silvia said...

This was really cool. I apparently write like Stephen King. I'd be curious to know what they base the results on as well. Probably punctuation, but in any case, it was a fun little quiz! Thanks for sharing!

kimberj said...

Mr. Darcey would be broken hearted to know I write like... Stephen King??? go figure.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like fun, gonna go check that out!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like fun, gonna go check that out!

Joanna said...

And I write like....James Joyce.

I'm a little bewildered. I've never felt inclined to read his stuff, but perhaps I should start?

Anonymous said...

Tina ... how did you guess? Is everyone getting Dan Brown? I would have been happier if it had just said "FAIL" in massive letters.

Maria Speidel said...

I so wanted Austen but the computer spit out Vonnegut, too! I chose a chatty email to a friend as my sample, thinking it was the most natural thing to flow from brain to keyboard, but what would have happened if I had chosen say, a Q & A with doctor specializing in eating disorders or an article on a handicapped swimmer? (I used to write for People and have also freelanced for various mags.) Tempted to waste more time finding out. . .

Daydream Lily said...

how interesting. I tried a bunch of different blogposts and I got either James Joyce or David Foster Wallace.

I wanted to get Chuck P, of course :)

English Muse said...

i would love to figure out how to be jane austen! if anyone out there got jane, can you post your writing sample?! xox

Anonymous said...

that's fun. I write like Anne Rice. I'm good with that. Descriptive, artsy, engaging, interesting, fun, colorful story telling.

Anonymous said...

I got Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace and James Joyce depending on what I put in.. guess I still haven't found my writers voice yet. :)

Casee Marie said...

I've been playing with the writing test over the past couple of days, trying it with different paragraphs from a little novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year. I got some interesting results but my favorite scene from the novel got my favorite result: J.D. Salinger! (:

Alli said...

I write like Jane Austen, may I have that date?

Tina Tarnoff said...

This is hilarious! I checked two examples of my writing, one said J.K. Rowling and the other James Joyce!!! Ha!

The Dandelion Chronicles said...

Wuaw! I write like Margaret Mitchell who wrote Gone with the Wind.. How cool is that!?! I love that site now.. :D

Giulia said...

Tina--again, Jane Austen acc. to this site writes as H.G. Wells. And yes, it is hilarious to think of him in a Regency ensemble. Makes me wish I had Photoshop. One more thing to be silly about...

...now one thing not so silly. All you devils who complain about James Joyce: I shall be over to your blogs in the next 2-3 days to whip you into shape. You should be honored. Don't worry about Ulysses--read the great short stories in Dubliners. For heaven's sake. The Dead is one of the great (if not greatest) short stories written in bloody English (or any other language). Now get to it or I'll whoop ya.

Yes Yes. Yes I will. Yes.

Ahem.

Unknown said...

I write like Margatet Mitchell...hmm.

Shelley Trbuhovich said...

i once had to write a parody using the style of kurt vonnegut for an english lit assignment at uni, i scored my one and only A+ in my four years of tertiary education!!! the short, sharp sentences, crassness, exclamation points, cursing....yes, i remember it well!

Julia said...

also, I just put a Bret Easton Ellis quote in the text analyzer, and apparently he writes like Stephenie Meyer. This test is an abomination! hahaa not really, but I'm getting a kick out of it.

Amanda said...

Another KV here...it has to be the exclamation marks, because I used bits of my "The Bachelorette" recap post! ;) I've read quite a bit of Vonnegut and I'm pretty sure we sound nothing alike, ha!

Mary said...

Wow that's really fun. Not at all accurate I'm sure, but still fun. Apparently I'm Stephen King. Who knew?