Unpublished Diaries and Notebooks (1872-1876)

Dostoevsky abhors characters and stories that feel “made up.”  “As soon as an artist tries to turn away from truth,” he says, “he will immediately become ungifted and at that very moment will lose all his talent.”

At first, this seems a strange stance for a fiction writer.  How can one tell stories without making them up?  These notebooks themselves are insightful to Dostoevsky’s process.  

First, he scours the news (often crime).  He devotedly kept up with what people were going through in his time and place.  But he didn’t just read the news passively.  When he found something that interested him, he’d try to sketch out possible inner experiences that would’ve led to the criminal’s actions. 

Second, he searches for an image or a sound to embody the specific experience.  “Artistry,” he says, “expresses the idea with image.”  For example, when trying to capture a little girl’s experience when she is beaten by her father, he refers to it as “Papa! Papa!”  More than any idea, hearing her innocent plea brings to life her experience.  

This embodiment at first seems an unnecessary step, but it’s key to preserve the life of the experience.  If he were only to use a concept, he would likely retain the shell of the experience but lose the pecan.  For example, if Dostoevsky’s shorthand of the little girl’s experience was simply a word like “suffering,” it is in danger of becoming an abstraction, divorced from real life, trapped in cold reasoning that can operate independently from love.  This is Dostoevsky’s greatest fear.  “To see them, you must love them.”

Third, he collects these images from all of his experiences—not only the news, but also fiction and painting as well as his own memories.  He likes to cultivate in his notebooks an abundant store of images weighty with meaning.

Fourth, he endlessly shuffles and arranges these images to arrive at a more complex understanding of his time and place.  This allows him to move beyond the closed loop of preconceived notions out toward life itself.  He uses his notebooks to cycle through meaningful sounds and images, feeling out a pattern.  

This pattern is the goal.  Fiction gives form to experience—not only to what we have experienced, but even to what we could experience.  This form is not made up.  It is the pattern that the storytellers seek.  The pattern can’t be acheived through the use of an abstract template.  It must be felt out, known only by its beauty.

Dostoevsky’s form of storytelling is less inventing than assembling.  That isn’t to say that he isn’t constantly inventing, but even his fabrications don’t advance to the final draft unless they adhere to the beautiful pattern.