NEW YORK — For anyone who has thought Charles Dickens was lurking in his or her prose, a new website claims it can find your inner author.
The recently launched I Write Like has one simple gimmick: Paste a few paragraphs that exemplify your writing, click “analyze” and — poof! — it says you write like Stephen King or Ernest Hemingway or Chuck Palahniuk.
The site’s arrival has lit up the blogosphere. Gawker tried a transcript from one of the leaked Mel Gibson phone calls. The suggested author: Margaret Atwood. The New Yorker found that an invitation to a birthday party was James Joycean.
Atwood, herself, tried the site only to discover she apparently writes like King. “Who knew?” she said in a Twitter message.
Dmitry Chestnykh, a 27-year-old Russian, modeled the site on software for e-mail spam filters and uploaded works by about 50 authors. He never expected the sudden success and plans to improve the site’s accuracy by including more books.
