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This has been making a run around the internet these days. It's a site that checks the gender of your writing, supposedly to determine if you are a man or a woman who is writing. Not sure I believe you could ever tell on such a small set of key words. However, it is fun to pump in text and see the results.
Check out the Gender Genie
Okay, so how did I fare? I found the results interesting. Out of 14 completed stories (I didn't bother with just snippets as I quickly observed that portions of a story might present different results from the whole) 10 came out as Male, and 4 as Female. The stories that registered as "Female" were so by a large margin. Most of the stories that registered as Male, did so by much smaller margins, often within a very small percent. A few I wonder if a different edit might have skewed them the other way. I wasn't able to accurately predict which stories I thought would register one way or another. As I ran through, I made little theories: stories with internal conflict would all register as female, where those with external conflict would register as male. *bzzzz* Though my most outlandishly violent story did come up decisively male, other stories of action were much closer to a middle ground than I expected. Other stories, where the crux of it is internal conflict, and somewhat personal, came out male as well. And some female. So that theory went out the window.
Then I thought, well perhaps it would be those stories where female characters play a stronger role. Two out of the four "female" stories did have substantial female characters. Another one does make references to the main characters wife, but the fourth doesn't have a woman at all. On the other hand, four of the "male" stories have substantial female characters, or several. My thought there was logical, since she her and hers, were 3 of the 16 "female" signifiers, I figure a story without a female character was much less likely to produce a high "female" score. Interestingly, the existence of male characters is irrelevant, as the counter words, he him and his, are not among the words counted.
I was tempted to run my novel through, to see how it fared. But, I thought that 153K words would break the page. Maybe not. But I didn't want to push it.
I make no claims to the accuracy of such a tool. Nor do I know what to make of it, when it can vary quite this much for one writer.
I can only say this: It's an amusing way to waste a little time. And it also inspired me to take out an old piece, and actually type it in to get a read on it. However, one old story was my limit. I've got 1/3 of a new story done, and I need to get cracking on that.
Check out the Gender Genie
Okay, so how did I fare? I found the results interesting. Out of 14 completed stories (I didn't bother with just snippets as I quickly observed that portions of a story might present different results from the whole) 10 came out as Male, and 4 as Female. The stories that registered as "Female" were so by a large margin. Most of the stories that registered as Male, did so by much smaller margins, often within a very small percent. A few I wonder if a different edit might have skewed them the other way. I wasn't able to accurately predict which stories I thought would register one way or another. As I ran through, I made little theories: stories with internal conflict would all register as female, where those with external conflict would register as male. *bzzzz* Though my most outlandishly violent story did come up decisively male, other stories of action were much closer to a middle ground than I expected. Other stories, where the crux of it is internal conflict, and somewhat personal, came out male as well. And some female. So that theory went out the window.
Then I thought, well perhaps it would be those stories where female characters play a stronger role. Two out of the four "female" stories did have substantial female characters. Another one does make references to the main characters wife, but the fourth doesn't have a woman at all. On the other hand, four of the "male" stories have substantial female characters, or several. My thought there was logical, since she her and hers, were 3 of the 16 "female" signifiers, I figure a story without a female character was much less likely to produce a high "female" score. Interestingly, the existence of male characters is irrelevant, as the counter words, he him and his, are not among the words counted.
I was tempted to run my novel through, to see how it fared. But, I thought that 153K words would break the page. Maybe not. But I didn't want to push it.
I make no claims to the accuracy of such a tool. Nor do I know what to make of it, when it can vary quite this much for one writer.
I can only say this: It's an amusing way to waste a little time. And it also inspired me to take out an old piece, and actually type it in to get a read on it. However, one old story was my limit. I've got 1/3 of a new story done, and I need to get cracking on that.
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What eluded me was any ability to detect a pattern. Even the one thought that was most logical to me, the presence of female characters, wasn't an automatic feature. (I thought this, since 1/5 of the words on their list were female pronouns) But one of my "female" stories doesn't have a single female character, and another only mentions a woman in passing. There just seemed to be no real pattern I could detect.
One thing I haven't yet done is compare a rough draft to a final draft and see where they end up. Did it start out more one then move toward the middle? Did it actually cross over from one gender to the other? Or did it get stronger. If I get bored again, I might take more measurements just because I'm curious.
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