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Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

Fun little pubquiz. Which writing is whose? Lots of things can be inferred by looking at the author's writing style and this is mainly inspired by the fact that I almost always am able to guess who had written which "anonymously written" story. I plucked some small excerpts from several stories of different authors along with a brief analysis of their style. To spice it up, I've also written my own excerpts to emulate the each of the featured author's writing. Can you tell which one is fake and which one is real? I will do others in the future if I feel like it.

 

Mystic Warrior 
Analysis: short sentences, lots of actions and not a lot of very intricate descriptions of environments. The prose is what can be considered as pretty beige. It's clear, simple and does what it needs to be done. It reads extremely easily and is easy to comprehend. Mystic often writes in first person, it's rare to see otherwise. With dialogue, it's actually very remarkable that you rarely have parts with only dialogue. Most of the time it's broken up with a few paragraphs of descriptions or action. She doesn't often use the word says, preferring to use a line of character acting instead.

It honestly reminds me a lot of the style one might find in a young adult novel. 

In her later work this lack of conjunctions and words that connect other sentences together becomes less noticeable and frequent. It's a little more verbose, but never on the level that it would sacrifice readability. 

Sometimes you get a very short sentence or even a single word as a paragraph. It's often used to emphasize very important moments. It has that kind of snappiness. 

Lots of short stories are also very fairytale esque and always has a fleeting feeling of whimsy. Curse words are very rare. In general, the covered subjects are relatively family friendly, things never get very gory. In her previous old work, she also likes to use the phrase "all of a sudden" a lot.

 

Mystic Warrior excerpt A
“You misunderstand me: the decision has been made. I have a successor.”

The queen pales, her knuckles whitening around the sword. All around us, the soldiers lean in, holding their breath. And the emissary produces an inked feather-pen to inscribe a few words on a parchment. 

 

Mystic Warrior excerpt B
I sneaked into the kitchen. Mother would yell at me if she caught me doing so. She said it was not proper for a lady to wander around at night. My chest burnt as old memories boiled over my thoughts. I rubbed off my tears. The memory of her melodious voice stung. 

The room was empty.

 

Enterpride
Analysis: Not a lot of examples to pull from, but I've always considered him to be one of the most verbose authors. Lots of adjectives, difficult long word coupled with long ass sentences. It's more obvious in brimstone but I recall having seen it in treatise to heartly banners in a lesser extent. The same could be seen in his dialogue. Often the characters speak in a very formal tone, full sentences, proper grammar and no accents.

 

Enterpride excerpt A
"Then you and I are alike," she spoke after a long pause, wherein she rapidly changed passions like a chameleon does colors. "Are you certain she is here?"

"Absolutely," I affirmed.

"Then listen carefully. We now stand in the grand halls of the seventh plane of hell that bears the weight of the six planes of ice above and the six planes of fire below. I came awake on the shores, swam across that vile river, and was delivered to a group of hellspawn. They beat me and dragged me until they saw in me the stone that had first condemned me to the fourth plane.

 

Enterpride excerpt B
"One might think a man is foolish to keep pursuing a flower who blooms for another man. I sincerely hope that you relinquish this wasteful endeavor for once." Garreth polished his sword till it gleamed.

This leaves you in a state of rightful indignation. The rage almost spilled out of your balled fists. You were a mere powerless knight with no lands nor cities to call your own while this wretched cretin possessed bountiful fields of wheat that stretches as far as the eye can see. Isabella, no word of the gods could convince your otherwise that only you could be worthy for her hand. 

Celicni

Yeah, simply indescribable. Very grimdark work, lots of violence, lots of heavy adult content and semi-eastern European names that are americanized. The use of sound effects and things like italics and EXCLAMATION MARKSMARKS are used pretty often. Word choice is very rough. Cel often likes to use curse words in dialogue and in his prose. Compared to the other two, his prose is one of the more informal ones with lots of colloquial terms thrown in. 

Paragraphs are often on the longer side.

Excerpt A

Your legs are on her arms so she is completely helpless here. You enjoy the warm feeling for a couple of minutes until she stops moving. Good job, you just killed a young girl with your dick. You must be proud.

You are suddenly exactly where you wished for, but your body is not your own. It feels heavy and stiff. You realize you're now INSIDE of the guard, controlling him directly. You hear shouts from the other guards:
"WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT BASTARD GO!?"
"HE JUST DISAPPEARED INTO THIN AIR!"

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
These analyses are fun to read, there are definitely people around with recognizeable styles. The Thunderdome duels for instance aren't really going to be "anonymous" except in the technical sense before long, unless people deliberately mix it up.

But I think the issue with having people guess, is that it's not really guessing if you've already read the stories they draw from.

When you're reading the best stories they just effortlessly draw you in in a way that's hard to articulate. Which is why I do think to improve your writing it's a worthwhile skill to be able to take a step back and examine a passage on the meta level, to identify what creates certain affects.

Edit: a momentous post



Now I can never make another.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

I assumed that everyone has a very terrible memory of the stories or has never read them. Sadly enough I couldn't get samples of lesser known works such as previous written short stories. Then again, this is all just for funsies and mainly notes of funny things I've observed.

It was honestly difficult to see differences between tmanaking and Lux inferni, mainly because i haven't read enough of their stuff to make a good analysis. 

Then you have people who write in the same kind of cadence like Mizal and Corgi whose only difference is how they format their paragraphs and dialogue. I honestly will say that I would be very hard pressed to find a difference between ninjapitka and Endmaster except that Ninja has the tendency to use a little bit more environmental descriptions in his stories (not always, true life is the glaring exception) than Endmaster who prefers to use dialogue (and his characters tend to swear more).

In my head I always put Berkazerka as the antithesis of End in forms of writing style. I know through combing through posts and reading his stuff that Berkazerka struggles with dialogue. That's probably the reason why Deadman walking has so little of it. With Endmaster he actually leans towards using as much dialogue as possible as I recalled from one of his old interviews. I always thought back of Alpha Wolf when he said that. 

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

If it helps any besides maybe continued issues with proof reading in general, I wouldn't say I really have much of a unique style for you to miss. That's at least what I think. May actually explain some things. Kinda hard to stand out if you don't have your own voice might be worth trying to improve.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
The only things I can point out in my writing are the strong preference for limited third person, always using present tense, and the avoidance of -ly adverbs outside of dialogue (I try, at least).

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
Anybody who doesn't reply to this post is a loser.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

What about Thunderdome duels between two mystery duelers?

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
Perhaps at some later point when we need to spice it up, but it seems like people have it booked for publicly settling grievances for the near future.

One of the possibilities of the SECRET DUELER system that Sent was pretty into was the idea that people would get thrown for a loop when expecting a story by a ten year old noob and instead getting someone who clearly was not that and having to guess which now established member had stepped in.

Might be interesting to have a bunch of people write the same simple scene or something though, just to demonstrate how much style can change it. But if the idea is to guess, it's not difficult for an author to adjust a written piece to make that much more difficult. Enterpride for instance, reviewers have brought up some of these things Darius mentioned before, and I'm sure he's got enough awareness of it that he could switch it to to disguise himself pretty easily.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
Commended by Sherbet on 4/26/2023 11:20:10 PM

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
This is adorable, thank you!

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
Cute

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
Here's to 20000 more!

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
Ooh, that's a fun idea. In general, I'm pretty insensitive to these things(says a lot about me as a writer), and I would only know from some glaring details(say, the kill darius duel). I can't really tell which ones are yours, though I remember that excerpt from Cel's story clear enough.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

Share this resource with the wrong people, and these writers will be swarmed with a bunch of mini-thems, toddling around and mimicking everything they do. 

But really, nice breakdowns of their writing styles. Having just critiqued Celicni’s writing a few days ago, I feel that you described his well. Very gritty with tortured characters and an underlying tone of misery, peppered with blunt lines that are naturally funny. At least to me.

I'm not familiar enough with the rest to determine which excerpt is authentic, although I'm going to guess that Mystic_Warrior's Excerpt B is the fake. Either way, it's fascinating to see the inner workings. If you ever do more, I'd love to see. 

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
Well you know how the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all. I think most people when starting out at writing *do* attempt to imitate authors they've been heavily exposed to, intentionally or not. Once you're more comfortable you develop your own style, but I've always found getting really immersed in a book with a unique cadence or style can for at least a little while affect the way I think of sentences.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
I find that sometimes it extends to more than writing - after reading some book that I liked, I would start to *think* in the voice of the author.

I had written something about thematic imitation but I realized that it was just me wanting to write about scifi after watching/reading scifi, nothing special.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
You can also turn the order of it all around. Like when I am about to start writing for a particular topic, I actively search out movies, books or plays that either have the tone I'm looking for or explore the topic. Maybe even re-watch/read/listen the first 10 minutes to get over the first blank page hurdle

Also goddamn, Enterpride's writing sucks balls

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

That sounds so cool. Like having someone else in your head. How long does it last?

I should try to be more aware and see if this happens to me.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
I just notice myself using little phrases or thinking about things in a different tone constantly. Depending on how long I read or how impactful it was, it fades after a day to a week maybe?

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
I've had this happen too. It was always more noticeable with an older author or after binging on poetry, because in that case it's very distinctively not MY voice.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

Haha I was joking and thinking of a more extreme situation in which they transform into doppelgangers, waiting to copy everything the original writers do. Anything published is unsafe as they’ll quickly upload their own version, and they’ll all argue over who is the original.

But you make a good point if they do it healthily. I unconsciously did the same as a child and saw rapid improvement. I loved E. L. Konigsburg, and it showed. I think I’m just a little cynical because I’ve had extremely negative experiences with it. 

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

I wonder if ChatGPT can emulate specific author styles.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

Can't wait for my AI girlfriend to start talking to me like enterpride.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

Good post! I don't have anything useful to add, I just liked the post.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

Cool idea.  As a newcomer, I've not gotten familiar enough with the various author's to make a pass at this, but I look forward to seeing any future analysis you do.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
I feel like there were quite a few other paragraphs you could have chosen for me...

Also wait, I don't have a fake excerpt here 😥

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

It's funny you included Enter in this and yet no one guessed that he had written a certain contest entry

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago

This seems fun. So far, I've managed to guess all the Thunderdome duel's entrants (including the secret one in the Mean Girls) except Enter's. I didn't expect that at all.

I never really thought of my own writing style, tbh. But this is a pretty good analysis. When writing In Moonlit Water, I was worried there was too much purple prose, although from this it seems that isn't the case. I'm also planning to write more 2nd person stories the next time I join a contest. 

Ok, I'm a bit scared by how well you know my writing style and how it's changed. Makes me wonder if you've read everything I've ever written and scrutinized it. 

I know the first one for obvious reasons. For the second, I'm not very sure since I haven't read much of Enter's work in a while, I might read a bit and edit in a guess later. And I think you were still editing the Celicni one before Mizal edit-locked you (or at least, that's what I remember seeing in a half-asleep daze a few days ago) but I like the idea that you just didn't want to emulate it lol.

Want to copy another person's writing?

one year ago
Where's MY analysis? I want an analysis too!