This week in double rainbows I mean publishing…
Stephen Parrish pointed me to a NY Times survey of the world of book trailers, those magical creatures that use video to convince us we should read books. While only 0.1% of everyone out there decided to purchase a book via a book trailer, the kids these days seem to love them according to an online survey at Teenreads.
And speaking of viral, the I Write Like app was positively ubiquitous this week, though if anyone can prove that it’s more than a random author generator I’d love to see it. I plugged the first chapter of JACOB WONDERBAR in and it said I write like James Joyce. So….. yeah. Thank goodness ULYSSES is the most popular novel of all time among children eight to twelve.
William Faulkner speaks!! Some of Faulkner’s lectures to students have been uploaded and can be found here. I actually needed some occasional translation help from my Southern wife due to Faulkner’s incredible accent, but was totally hooked by his lecture on What Makes Man Endure especially. Faulkner’s vision for the last sound on Earth during the end of times: two people arguing about where they’re going to go in their spaceship. Oh, actually three, because one will be writing a book about it.
Author Janet Fitch wrote a really terrific Top 10 Tips for Writers, which I thought was way better than most Top 10 Tips for Writers lists. Some of my favorite parts: Write the sentence, not just the story, Kill the Cliche, and most importantly: Write in scenes. (via Jacket Copy)
Society of Authors chair Tom Holland spoke out against industry standard e-book royalties, calling them “not remotely fair.”
And over at the Guide to Literary Agents blog, Chuck Sambuchino put together a great overview of the different sections in a nonfiction book proposal.
This week in the Forums: insanely cute kittens, a study shows that competition may impact creativity, which character is the favorite you’ve ever written, and, of course, how did you come up with that?
Comment! Of! The! Week! goes to Kerry Gans, who I thought had some good insight on the question of why it’s so hard to tell whether our own writing is good. Could it be a visual thing?:
Maybe because my typed Word document looks the same as everyone else’s typed Word document. What I mean is that you can see that you can’t jump as high as the NBA guys, or that the person you drew looks more like freaky tree, or hear that your guitar riff sounds like your cat scratched it out. But my words typed on a page look pretty much the same as JK Rowlings’.
I also think it might be because writing is so much a “felt” art — you are so invested in what you write that it “feels” good to you. How could you work so hard and put so much of yourself into it and have it NOT be good?
And I think the industry itself makes it hard, because so much of it is subjective. There are some truly awful books that have made it to print, and some very good ones that probably have not. This subjectivity makes it hard to measure how good your work is. As Jon VanZile said above: “There’s no way to keep score.”
And finally, after linking to everyone’s favorite Double Rainbow video yesterday, I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug the Double Rainbow song, which is also incredibly incredible. If only I could figure out WHAT DOES IT MEAN:
Have a great weekend!
Cameron says
I will say that the "I write like" app is consistent. I put in over a chapter each from 3 different works in progress of mine, and every time it told me I write like Stephen King.
Then again, maybe it just looks for key words and since I write mysteries with "death," "murder," and "body" in the first couple of chapters, it made a mistake.
howdidyougetthere says
Comment of the Week man has brilliant insight. Well done.
Kristi
cheekychook says
I can't prove that "I write like" is anything more than a random author generator, but I can offer up a result that gave me pause. I entered everything from blogs, to posts, to excerpts from my WIP and came up with results ranging from Shakespeare to Wallace to King to Atwood. I was completely thinking the results were random. Then, on a whim, I entered a piece of Twilight fan fiction and I got the result Stephanie Meyer. So, coincidence? Maybe. But her name didn't come up with any of the other things I entered….
Ina says
Apparently my first paragraph is Stephen King, my first chapter is James Joyce, my second chapter is Agatha Christie and my third Douglas Adams.
Oh dear me.
Melanie says
"It's so intense-tense."
(I may be driving my husband crazy listening to this on repeat.)
Samuel D. Grey says
I decided to put three different chapters of one of my WIP's into that "I write like" app and was given two Dan Browns and an H.P. Lovecraft.
I then did the same thing with my other WIP and was told that I write like H.G. Wells, James Joyce and Vladimir Nabakov.
I don't really know what that says about my writing.
Anonymous says
I just went to "I write like…" and typed in:
"double rainbow double rainbow double rainbow"
Like the magic eight ball, it answered!!
It said:
I write like Ian Fleming!
WHAT DOES IT MEAN!!!!!!!!!????????
Livia says
That double rainbow song is actually pretty good? I'm so buying it on itunes.
Michelle says
Well, Cameron, that app said I write like King, too. I plugged in the first 250 from my middle-grade. Maybe it was the use of "bony," and "enemies." idk
I do know I've never read a King novel. Having seen Carrie in Jr. High was enough to freak me out for life.
Nathan, I forgive you for posting that video. I may never get the song out of my head, but I forgive you.
Em says
Okay, this has been my big science experiment/game this week.
I Write Like isn't completely random, but as Cameron said I think it's as much about keywords as anything else.
If you fill the writing sample box with just one keyword over and over, you can start to see how it "thinks."
Fill the sample text box with "elephant," it'll say you write like Kipling. "Magic" gives you Rowling, "ring" gives you Tolkien, "Volvo" gives you Meyer, and so on.
So while it says it looks at your writing style, I think it's mostly looking at your keyword frequencies compared to the frequencies in number-crunched works by the authors it compares you to.
And now a certain part of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is nagging at the back of my mind…
Lia Victoria says
I got James Joyce in the I Write App too. Then I put, "Magic fun ha" in about 50 times, and suddenly I was JK Rowling.
IT'S SO LEGIT.
Felicity says
I plugged in the exact same blog post two different times at I WRITE LIKE and had two different answers: Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace.
Anonymous says
Nathan,
This is one of the most entertaining This Week in Publishing blog posts ever.
Thanks.
(just tell us that double rainbow guy isn't your evil twin!!)
Anonymous says
bwaaa haaaa haaaa
aspiring_x says
i was sure iwl was random, so i tried to fool it. i took several passages from my book and entered them multiple times randomly. the authors it correlated the passages with were always the same. so, it's not completely random. but as to WHAT data it uses to make its claims, i have no idea!
Anonymous says
I think other people are right, with the IWL app not being random, but having to do more with the use of certain key words. Plug in Harry Potter fanfiction and you get JKR, but the same thing happens if you just write "Harry" over and over again.
I put in "The Nightingale and the Rose," and got Neil Gaiman. Putting in The Picture of Dorian Gray gave Oscar Wilde…
buildingalife says
Gah! On CNN "Double Rainbow Guy: No sex, drugs here"
https://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2010/07/15/vasquez.double.rainbow.guy.cnn?hpt=C2
Morgan says
I actually got Chuck Palahniuk (why do I still have to google his name every time I spell it?) for several different pieces. Now, I'm not saying I write like him, but at least the thing's consistent! And consistently entertaining!
Anonymous says
I'd love to watch the Faulkner lectures, only the library at UVA insists on using Quicktime, which doesn't work in Linux.
Are librarians supposed to support open formats so that these things will be easily watchable in fifty years time?
*grumble*
Bane of Anubis says
Yes, I'm hoping that app is not too accurate :)… 1st Chapter – Dan Brown (which I've actually heard before from an agent… not in a good way 😉 — I can handle Dan Brown…
But chapter 2 — Stephenie Meyer… I'm hoping it's because of the romance words 🙂
Chapters 3 – 5… David Foster Wallace… at least getting some consistency 🙂
Thanks for the links.. A nice distraction.
Melanie says
"The best is the best, and the best is to put inside the covers of a book the complete turmoil and experience and insight of the human heart…" – Faulkner
This library of lectures is fantastic. I will be busy with this for days…
Anonymous says
Wow,I write like sure is distracting. I'm relieved to see I'm not the only one who got different writers, especially when I'm just about finished with my editing. I'm mostly James Joyce and David foster, chapter by chapter, but when I put is all in (yes, I really am that sad) it came up with Chuck Palaniuk, so not sure how that works. It kept me distracted for a while though, thanks Nathan!
Other Lisa says
I wrote like:
Stephen King, Chuck Palahnuik and J.K. Rowling!
Um, right.
Christi Goddard says
I put in chapters individually of two MSS and individual short stories I'd written. I think it analyzes SOMETHING, but what I don't know:
Lesser Evils: 46% Dan Brown, 30% James Joyce, 6% H P Lovecraft, and 3% each Stephen King, Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Mario Puzo, J K Rowling, and (wtf?) Edgar Allan Poe.
Postmortal: 65% Stephen King, and 7% (a chapter a piece) Douglas Adams, H P Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, and Vladimir Nabokov.
I won't do a chapter by chapter breakdown of Lesser Evils since it's boring, but I will share the breakdown of Postmortal because I find it very interesting.
Chapter 1: Kurt Vonnegut
Chapter 2: Douglas Adams
Chapter 3: Vladimir Nabokov
Chapter 4: Stephen King
Chapter 5: Stephen King
Chapter 6: Stephen King
Chapter 7: Isaac Asimov
Chapter 8: Stephen King
Chapter 9: H P Lovecraft
Chapter 10: Stephen King
Chapter 11: Stephen King
Chapter 12: Stephen King
Chapter 13: Stephen King
Chapter 14: Stephen King
It suggests that I tried a variety of influences before settling on a Stephen King style.
As for my short stories, the results are this:
BOOM – Chuck Palahnuik
The End of the World – Margaret Atwood
A Typical Morning – Stephen King
You Are – Stephen King
Bitter Hands – Stephen King
We Are – Arthur Conan Doyle
I Am – Oscar Wilde
Peeping Tom – Chuck Palahniuk
Solo Pillow Talk – Dan Brown
Language is a Playground – Margaret Atwood
Eight True Things – Chuck Palahniuk
Candyland says
You're right. It is incredibly incredible…
Phyllis says
I don't believe IWL is deliberately bogus, but for all purposes, it's a random name generator. Comparing the vocabulary of a couple of paragraphs to a text of novel length can hardly produce relevant results.
I just thought it was funny.
Anita Saxena says
I'm in the process of rewriting my WIP. So I plugged in Chapter 1 from the old version and apparently it said I wrote like David Foster Wallace. But then I plugged in my rewritten Chapter 1 and it said I wrote like Ursula K. Le Guin.
Is Le Guin an improvement over Wallace? A digression? Or just a whole different ball game? Who knows.
Haven't read either author. Perhaps, now I should….
Dana says
LOL, I got Charles Dickens & Stephen King. What a combination.
Kristin Laughtin says
This week has been SO INTENSE.
I used the I Write Like app on a couple different pieces, and there were a few passages where I could understand the comparison to X author, but I'm mostly inclined to agree that it's a random generator with only about ten authors' names plugged into it.
Go Comment of the Week! I never really thought about the fact that all our manuscripts look pretty similar, just looking at the screen. Of course we tend to think they're all equal.
Kelly Wittmann says
Yeah, "I Write Like…" is probably b.s., but you know what? I just needed someone to tell me I write like Kurt Vonnegut and to believe it for two seconds. Now it's back to reality.
Carolyn Abiad says
I'm apparently Kurt Vonnegut or David Foster Wallace like Felicity. Perhaps the app can't make up it's mind because we write in different voices for different purposes? And if we all accept that there isn't really anything new, just the same things presented in a new way, then it makes sense. We write according to our influences and there are other people in the universe who share our perspective. Did we need a computer analysis to tell us?
Lauren says
Nathan, I am swooning — SWOONING — over the mere idea of listening to Faulkner lectures when I get home from work today. I believe the only Faulkner recording I've heard until now has been his Nobel acceptance speech (which I love).
Thanks for inspiring me to get the rest of my pesky report for my day job finished.
Robert says
I agree that "I write like," if nothing else, is consistent. I plugged several different chapters of my work in there and they all came up either Joyce or Vonnegut (we all know that Joyce and Vonnegut are peas in a pod, right?). I also plugged the same chapter in a few times, and it always came up with the same response. I wonder why it never comes up with some crap author?
Kate says
I do love Janet Fitch. I especially love the way she never criticizes other writers. A real class act.
Courtney Cook Hopp says
I write like "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk. Never would have guessed that one in a million guesses.
Tom M Franklin says
i was Lewis Carroll. considering i'm writing humorous MG Steampunk, that's somewhat close enough.
neil gaiman put in two chunks from Anansi Boys and got Steven King and J.R. Tolkien. (https://bit.ly/byfhQh)
go figure.
…
Ben says
I played around with the "I Write Like" app as well. I'm pretty sure it's based on some kind of formula, though I have no idea whether it is accurate or not.
Arthur C. Clark was my first result. I tried two different chapters (one that is more subdued and another action scene) and got two different results. I removed one sentence from each chapter and got the same result. Then I plugged in most of my manuscript and got Arthur C. Clark again.
I'm intrigued about this man I write like…
John Jack says
Visual sense is one of four common writers' writing senses.
Visual writers miss out on stronger sensory feedback.
Reading aloud or along while writing tastes, hears, and feels the words, gustatory, aural, and tactile senses. Observe a group of writers reading or writing, some of their lips move, they hum along in accompaniment. Odds are they're the better writers, too, than the ones whose lips don't move.
Jenny Brown says
When I gave it a paragraph, I Write Like told me I wrote like James Joyce. When I fed it dialogue, it said I wrote like Mark Twain.
A friend who got the kind of advance we all dream of reports that it gave her 13 different authors ranging from Joyce to Stephanie Meyer.
Even NPR fell for this. You cannot go wrong flattering authors. It is undoubtedly table driven and it isn't a very fancy table.
swampfox says
Wouldn't it be better if the "I Write Like" thing came up blank?
Francis says
Oh my… my kittens made the front page! haha, that's golden 😀
Jil says
I write like Margaret Atwood – so app says. Well I am Canadian and my book is about oppressed women, although I don't know if any of that showed in what I sent.
Kay says
OMG!! I tried out that app. FUNKY OUTCOME! I don't know what to think.
Sample from my first chapter (which I just revised drastically a couple of weeks ago): Stephen King (Whaaaaa??? I've only read 1 King book, and I didn't really enjoy it that much. Is that a bad sign??)
Sample from chapter three: David Foster Wallace (Huuuuhhh? I must be a loser, b/c I don't know who that is.)
Sample from smack-dab in the middle of my novel (which was a love scene I wrote last summer, btw): Stephenie Meyer (saaaay what???)
Sample from a section toward the end of my book (which I JUST RECENTLY wrote a month ago, takes place in the wilderness of Croatia): Robert Louise Stevenson…wait! Robert Louise Stevenson????? YIPPIEEEEE! Tee-hee, sorry, I love RLS.
And finally, the last few paragraphs from the VERY LAST CHAPTER of my novel (which I wrote last summer): Margaret Mitchell (WHOA.)
Hmmm…wonder what this means.
Nathan, do you have any insight since you're an agent? My story's in first person, so could it depend on my characters, uh, mood or surroundings or something? Like whether she's using a lot of dialogue or more narrative or there's an action sequence???
Or, is it more likely b/c I wrote all these different scenes at different times (last summer vs more recently)?
Mike says
I plugged in the sample from my "page critique" entry and five samples from my blog. The only author who came up twice was Edgar Allen Poe.
Yeah, the one who died broke. Swell.
Robert says
"Robert Louise Stevenson"
Twice?
You love him?
Really?
Really?
lauradroege says
Like several hundred other people, I apparently write like Stephen King. But if Stephen King put some of his own work in this app, would he still write like himself?
D.G. Hudson says
The I Write Like app is fun, but I agree with Cameron regarding how it selects the author's name if it's not totally random.
With a mystery, it gave me H.P. Lovecraft, but with my sci-fi, the author's name was I. Asimov (yeah sure).
John Jack says
I suspect the I Write Like app is a rudimentary keyword analyzer that cross compares user input with samples from a pool of published works. The lack of any Hemingway hits to date suggests the pool of comparison samples is very limited and probably code writer biased.
k10wnsta says
As fun as it is, the 'I Write Like…' program is fundamentally flawed in that no matter what's plugged in there, the result will always be 1 of 40 wildly successful authors.
In order to be more useful, it should incorporate some rudimentary spellcheck of simple words and when a piece is submitted that's riddled with errors, it should just spit out a badge that says:
I write like a retard
It could also factor in some bad authors. I mean, the developer could work some really bad Twilight fanfic (I know, 'really bad' and 'Twilight fanfic' is redundant) into the algorithm. It wouldn't have to use their names, but it could say something like:
I write like shitty author #3
Hmmm, I wonder…would getting swift and brutal criticism be more or less difficult coming from an automaton?
It ocurred to me that one might take offense at my use of the word 'automaton', but please understand that that was not my intent. Our programmed brothers will soon be sentient and I, for one, will welcome our new robot overlords…
k10wnsta says
Oh, and for the record, I too wondered how the program made its calculations and I dug up this explanation from the developer:
'Currently it analyzes vocabulary (use of words), number of words, commas, and semicolons in sentences, number of sentences with quotation marks and dashes (direct speech).'
Although he said he's keeping the list of authors secret for now, he did divulge there are 40 of them.
You can read his responses to people's questions in the comment section of his blog:
https://www.codingrobots.com/blog/2010/07/09/i-write-like/