It seems the answer is yes. Why? Well. You remember the writing-style analyzer program I mentioned here? Well I ran two sections of my dark fantasy story through it, and the first one came up Margaret Atwood, and the second, David Foster Wallace.
A chapter of my fantasy story came up Anne Rice. And a chapter of a steampunk/alternate-history story I may never finish, came up Dan Brown. So I'm wondering, how the hell does it work? Is it just keyed to make the most insulting comparison it possibly can?
Hmm. Lemme put in the first chapter of my first SF book. So apparently:
Ooookay. Other than it having lots of funky words, due to the first chapter being from the aliens' viewpoint and set on their homeworld (and, thank you, the words aren't quite as silly as Brobdingnag or Lilliput), and the occasional sentence with more than one clause, how the hell does this thing come up with that?
Let's try the first chapter of my second book.
...I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.
First chapter of the unfinished third book in the series:
Okay, the only pattern I'm seeing is that it really seems to try the most insulting comparison it can. Well, that first paragraph does mention the sky (the planet it takes place on orbits one of those lots-of-sunspots variables, so its sky always has an aurora)—but at no time do I compare that sky to the color of television tuned to a dead channel. Incidentally, nowadays, "the color of television tuned to a dead channel" means a very bright blue, the color the sky is on the Navajo reservation, and the very antithesis of urban blight he was attempting to invoke.
Let's try the fourth book in the series, which takes place at the same time as the third:
It's gotta be word choice, it's just gotta; that first part is about the alien cop who's the protagonist of the first book. Lots of mention of murder and police ranks, you know—though to my knowledge not even the NYPD has any Baron-Inspectors.
All right, let's try and figure out what's wrong with the SOB. One more shot, the first section of a short story about the felinoids' first contact with humanity:
Gotta be keywords; that part's about fusion rockets, as was the section I tested that very first time. Then again, I suppose, at least, it's not insulting me this time: Clarke may have sucked at life but he was pretty good at describing space travel. Personally I think that section is more reminiscent of Niven—since it is in part almost a redux of "The Warriors", the one about first contact with the Kzinti—but I'm probably not impartial.
Still, though, those comparisons to Dan Brown, Anne Rice, and Margaret Atwood: that's just unkind.
PS. So, as a larf, I put in the first chapter of Chesterton's "The Flying Inn." Apparently he writes like Lovecraft. Which, apart from a very few superficial similarities, is just about the opposite of the truth.
3 comments:
Yay! New TVs tuned to a dead channel are a really pretty bright blue! I never thought of that - it makes me happy.
As far as I can tell, Dan Brown has something to do with descriptions of rooms.
Well that's odd, since there's no descriptions of rooms in the section I gave it: just a description of London, and an American ambassador's daughter meeting a Meiji-era onmyoji on a bridge.
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