If you’re a writer, you’ve probably been directed towards the I Write Like website recently, it seems to be doing the rounds. It’s an interesting gimmick – you take a chunk of your writing, paste it into a box, and the site figures out which famous writer your style is most similar too.

I thought I’d try it out with my Bratislava novel draft. Given that I’ve tried really hard to have three different voices there, with alternating chapters narrated by three different characters (three very different characters, I had hoped), what I wanted to see is that each of the chapters “sounded like” a different writer.

So did they? Yes and no. Being a bit of a research-head, I didn’t just try one extract in the “I Write Like” analysis, but several, from different parts of the book. For each character I sometimes got a different writer: James Joyce, Bram Stoker and Dan Brown (! Oh no! I think I probably have it on public record that I think Dan Brown is a terrible writer!!). But for each of the characters, and then also with the synopsis I wrote, one name kept coming up: Kurt Vonnegut.

Kurt Vonnegut? Really?? Didn’t he write weird science fiction stuff? Um, I actually have to admit I don’t remember reading any of his novels although I have a feeling I was meant to read Slaughterhouse Five at uni. Well, I’m intrigued now and must go away and read some of his stuff and try to figure out why this odd little bit of software would say I write in his style. Eek.

Having said that, I did Wikipedia him (has Wikipedia become a verb yet, like Google? It has for me!) and found something good. Vonnegut has created eight rules for writing a short story that may help me when I head back to that form at some stage:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Sounds like mostly good advice, and I love the idea of cockroaches eating the final pages, even if I’m not sure I agree with that final point. And now I’m off to track down some Vonnegut books at the local library. Once I pay my overdue fines, that is.

Tags: Bratislava novel, I Write Like, Kurt Vonnegut

Posted in Short Stories, Writing Fiction | 5 Comments »