You’ve Either Got, or You Haven’t Got Style

I’ve always known I was a truly great writer. All I lacked was a little public recognition, maybe a Whitbread prize, or The Booker. So when my good pal Barry sent me the link, he knew I’d be unable to resist. Jane Austen? Charles Dickens? James Joyce? Which great writer would be revealed as my Muse? Whose style was closest to my own purple prose? Tremulous with excitement I typed into my browser http://iwl.me/ and so arrived at the website “I write like”.

“Check which writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool” it proclaimed. It went on to explain the science by which it would analyse my word choice and writing style and compare them with those of famous authors.

I revisited the text of an earlier blog I’d written, and copied and pasted it into the tool.

What joy! What kudos! What distinction! I discovered, as I must always have known, that my writing was in the style of Arthur Clarke. Not a bad result; I’d have been proud to have written Childhood’s End, and let’s face it, he must have made a shed-load of dosh from his most popular writing.

Inspired, I hummed to myself the opening bars of Richard Strauss’s tone poem “Also sprach Zarathrustra”, you know that dramatic sunrise music which made the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey as memorable as Clarke’s book. The rising C-G-C brought a fresh thought to my mind. Perhaps April’s blog had not been the very best example of my art. If I clipped a few paragraphs from my more recent work, perhaps I’d ascend to the pantheon of 20th Century writers. Julian Barnes? Rushdie? Kafka, Nabokov, Virginia Wolf? The answer came back H P Lovecraft. Now I’ve heard of HP sauce, and I use HP printers and only genuine consumables, but Mr Lovecraft had, until that moment, escaped my notice. It seems he was another writer of science fiction (that figured). Critics described his work as gothic and weird. He was an American. I was not sure I was terribly flattered to have been found to match his style of writing.

There was only one escape route from this challenge to my literary standing. I’d have to discredit the tool, and pretty damn quick. So I borrowed a few words from Emily Bronte. As the website instructed, just a few paragraphs should do. I was intrigued to learn that Miss Bronte almost perfectly mirrored the style of that great writer Chuck Palahniuk.

I’ll let you be the judge. Here are just a few words from chapter 8 of Wuthering Heights:

Poor soul! Till within a week of her death that gay heart never failed her; and her husband persisted doggedly, nay, furiously, in affirming her health improved every day. When Kenneth warned him that his medicines were useless at that stage of the malady, and he needn’t put him to further expense by attending her, he retorted, ‘I know you need not – she’s well – she does not want any more attendance from you! She never was in a consumption. It was a fever; and it is gone: her pulse is as slow as mine now, and her cheek as cool.’

And here is an extract from Mr Palahniuk’s masterpiece Choke:

It’s dark and starting to rain when I get to the church, and Nico’s waiting for somebody to unlock the side door, hugging herself in the cold. ‘Hold on to these for me,’ she says and hands me a warm fistful of silk. ‘Just for a couple hours,’ she says. ‘I don’t have any pockets.’ She’s wearing a jacket made of some fake orange suede with a bright orange fur collar. The skirt of her flower-print dress shows hanging out. No pantyhose. She climbs up the steps to the church door, her feet careful and turned sideways in black spike heels. What she hands me is warm and damp. It’s her panties. And she smiles.

Now maybe it’s due to the dullness of my critical faculties, but I’m finding it hard to see tne similarities between these two pieces of writing. And so to my point. Be careful of what you find on the Web. There are a number of tools, algorithms and formulae that claim to analyse style and classify it. Readability tests such as the Fog Index are an example. Treat them with suspicion, or at the very least with caution.

I often meet the argument that plain language talks down to people of high intellect such as lawyers, doctors and Chief Officers. My reply usually contains 9 words of one syllable, and 1 word of two syllables. These simple words convey a complexity of thought and a depth of emotional turmoil none can better. And the words are found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1 Line 56. Now enter Hamlet….

About Phil Green

Phil Green has written 58 post in this blog.

Phil identifies himself as a perfomance consultant and teacher who helps people and organisations to do the best they can at work. He has strong skills in designing learning materials and workflow support, and draws from a wide spectrum of methods and technology. Co-designer of a certificated qualification in blended learning, he has trained hundreds of others from many industry sectors in how to create effective learning solutions, both online and offline.

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