This week, I am mostly writing like
I write like
Anne Rice
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
I saw the 'I write like...' meme in curiouswombat's journal and got curious, so I tested a bit of my most recent Draco/Hermione story, Knight on a Purple Bus, and the result was
I write like
J. K. Rowling
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
Result!
But then I thought, Maybe it's just recognising the character names. I mean Draco, Hermione, Harry Potter, Fenrir Greyback -- they're all a bit of a giveaway. So I tried my most recent Lord of the Rings story, The White Ladies of Eryn Carantaur (probably the story I'm most proud of):
I write like
Anne Rice
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
Not a result :-(
I tried to cheat by testing another chapter of the same story (I'm not too proud):
I write like
Neil Gaiman
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
No, still not Tolkien!
So then I decided to experiment by testing all of my Lord of the Rings stories, in order of writing (because, if anything, you might expect the first one to be the most Tolkien-like, and subsequent stories to become more and more me-like). Story 1, My Bow Shall Sing with your Sword, was, on reflection, a pretty clunky bit of writing:
I write like
Anne Rice
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
LOL!
Story 2 To the Sea, to the Sea! was still quite clunky:
I write like
H. P. Lovecraft
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
WTF?
Story 3, The Time of the Orcs has Come, was, I think, where I started to write like a writer, and write a story (as opposed to a series of events):
I write like
James Fenimore Cooper
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
Well, thank you! I love The Last of the Mohicans !
Story 4, The Lady Vanishes, is plotted around a week of traditional Yuletide celebrations and contains a lot of Yuletide folk law and some colourful descriptive passages:
I write like
James Joyce
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
Um... I'm flattered, but no, I think not!
Story 5, Misrule in Mirkwood, is set, you know, in Mirkwood and even includes a few brief quotes from The Hobbit, plus, in addition to 'Legolas' and 'Eowyn', the name 'Thranduil', so...
I write like
Oscar Wilde
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
I really should have put that one outside the cut!
Story 6, The Strange Sea Road, is an Arabian Nights fusion, and so pretty AU:
I write like
J. R. R. Tolkien
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
Yay! Result! {Does Happy Dance} All I had to do was persevere!
Unfortunately, I lost it again in story 7, The Usual Suspects, even though that's a Casablanca fusion and equally AU:
I write like
Anne Rice
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
Anne Rice now has a convincing lead!!
Story 8, Shadowland is a Forgotten Realms crossover, a monster of a story with two parallel-ish universes, and duplicate characters who (I hope) have different... characters, so shadow!Legolas still has, as Gimli puts it, an axe handle up his backside...
I write like
J. K. Rowling
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
No, not this story! (And JKR is on Anne Rice's tail).
Story 9, Season of Mists, is almost PWP, except it has a subplot about satyrs (tad-dail, 'two-legged animals') stealing human women:
I write like
Anne Rice
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
And Ann Rice has pulled well ahead!
Story 10 Winter Magic is unfinished, but has some fun stuff about Legolas having a tarot reading (somewhat ripped off from Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies). I'm kind of itching to get back to this story:
I write like
J. R. R. Tolkien
I Write Like. Analyze your writing!
Yay! Yay, yay, yaaaaaay!
JRR joins JKR in second place!
So it seems that I mostly write like Ann Rice, with a smattering of JKR (not surprising) and a touch of JRR Tolkien (though probably not as much of JRR as I would like, which might explain the spectacular lack of comments I always get on my LOTR stories ;-)