Is this Machine Lying to Me?

     At the beginning of last month I read a very entertaining post by Helen Caldwell on her blog 'My Writing Life' about a piece of online software called 'I Write Like...' which tells you, based on a passage or two, which famous writer your work most resembles.

     She got Agatha Christie for prose, Chuck Palahniuk for blog posts and H.P. Lovecraft for interviews. I just did it too and got the following results:
 








Find The Ideas You Want To Work With

     Something I’ve not heard bandied about much on writing blogs and the like is the idea of reading philosophy to find the ideas that you want to work with in your fiction. I think it’s perhaps quite a good one as without ideas, stories can’t exist. And who have the best, biggest, most out-there and profound ideas? Philosophers, of course.