Author Emulation
Vladimir Nabokov’s writing style changes greatly depending on the book. Each book has a unique style and varies greatly depending on the time he was writing it. One thing that stays pretty constant throughout his writing is the use of character perspective, imagery, and figurative language.
Character’s perspective
Throughout the majority of Vladimir's writing, it’s read through the writing of another character, often giving a one-sided and heavily biased narrative. While it might seem irritating at first to only truly get to read the story from a neutral perspective like some readers are used to, after a while it can lead to a fun and engaging style of writing allowing for re-reads to be used to see where the true feelings of other characters bleed through.
Imagery
Another common part of Vladimir's writing is the common use of imagery. The imagery in many of Nabokov’s works is often used as a way to mimic how the characters are feeling in the moment. It can also be used to contrast how the character feels to add a level of pain or a bit of a sardonic after taste for the reader.
Structure
While the structure of Vladimir’s work varies greatly depending on the work you look into most have the similar aspect of being a fictional characters writing, in the case of Lolita it’s the writings of a man confessing his crimes, In pale fire its the annotations by an editor on a poem from a long dead poet. All of these writings come from a different character and are treated as real within the setting of the story. Helping to give the reader a meta and in universe understanding of the writing.
Actual emulation
The Doll: An Autobiography, is an unfinished novel written by Susan Marguerite (Born 1968, June 4th and passed June 5th, 2013) detailing her life, unfortunately due to her untimely passing in a house fire all that remains of this manuscript is 3 small index cards of her writing. The title ‘The Doll: An Autobiography’ is written in black cursive ink at the top just above the red line. Under each red line for all 3 index cards is a different portion of the manuscript, this is understood with the use of 3 different kinds of pen for each of the writing, the first index card holding the very beginning of her life story, the second containing the middle, and the third of course containing the end of her autobiography. Below is the transcript of the first index card and of course its annotations done by her sister Kimberly Atwood, (1979 December 3rd - April 20th 2026).
The Doll: An Autobiography
I was born in 1968, in Washington. My mother raised me by herself for the first eleven years of my life, during which she was as gentle and attentive as a woman working three separate jobs to keep us afloat could be.
Eventually during one of her late nights as a waitress she met my stepfather who I would come to appreciate.
He of course gave me the gift of not only finally some time with my Mother but also the gift of a younger sister,
This rendered me to have a built-in friend who I would on occasion torment.
Annotations
Line 1: “I was - could be.”
I remember the stories Susie would tell about mom when she wasn’t with my father. I remember sitting on the porch, the sun setting and the taste of Kool-aid and oreos linger on the tip of my tongue while she would prattle on about how I was lucky I wasn't around when mom wasn’t kept busy keeping my father happy. About how she was always so stressed from work she would almost always take it out on young Susie, and how while she didn’t understand my father, and neither did I at the time, she was just glad that there was someone there to act as a block between her and Mom.
Explanation
Character’s perspective
I wanted to go the full mile with Nabokov's tendency to use characters in story perspective by using three different perspectives. The first being the third “unknown” party, the person writing the introduction who goes unnamed and works as a neutral perspective, acting as an intro for the reader to understand the story going forward and to get a neutral perspective on some of the characters. Then Susan’s perspective is subdued and takes a much calmer approach to the autobiography telling a somewhat calm tale of her life. And Kimberly’s perspective gives the reader an understanding that not all of what Susan writes might be true at first.
Structure
Since Nabokov's structure of writing can differ greatly from book to book, a good mixing of multiple of his stories sounded like a good idea to give an understanding of the different kinds of structures his stories will take. A large portion of the story structure, of course, is borrowed from Pale Fire with the writers' manuscript being annotated by someone who tells more than is needed.
Imagery
The imagery mostly comes at the very end of the story, mixing the simplistic joy of childhood from enjoying the sunset while eating a sweet treat before bed and mixing it with the quickly horrifying undertones of abuse that the main character of the story may be suffering.