autofiction

Novel-shaped personal history

Autofiction is fiction that draws heavily from the author's own life, blurring the line between autobiography and novel.

Unlike memoir, it doesn't claim strict factual accuracy—the author may invent, reshape, or dramatize personal experiences while maintaining a recognizable self as protagonist.

Her latest autofiction explores her mother's illness through a narrator who shares her name.

The genre invites readers to wonder what's real and what's invented.

genre

memoir

Written personal recollection

metafictionLiterature aware of itself
novelNew and unusual
confessionalBooth for admitting sins

prose · self-narrative · storytelling · first-person · narrative · authorship · novelist · memoirist · Nelson

self

identity

Who someone is

self-portraitArtist's image of themselves
self-examinationScrutiny of one's thoughts
self-discoveryLearning one's true character

introspection · confession · vulnerability · authenticity · subjectivity · self-scrutiny · self-fashioning · persona · alter-ego · testimony

craft

narrator

One who tells events

perspectiveAttitude or spatial rendering
voiceSound from throat
structureArrangement of interconnected parts

flashback · digression · plot · episode · vignette · scene · dialogue · interiority · stream-of-consciousness · recursive

blurring

truth

Accordance with reality

realityWhat actually exists
fabricationDeliberately untrue statement
inventionNew device or method

embellishment · distortion · memory · ambiguity · slippage · composite · reconstruction · reimagining · conflation · half-truths

postmodern

self-referential

Alluding to itself

metanarrativeAll-encompassing explanatory framework
intertextualityConnections between written works
fragmentationBreaking into smaller pieces

nonlinear · deconstruction · irony · pastiche · bricolage · playfulness · anti-narrative · fourth-wall · hybridity · genre-bending

autofiction

memoir

identity

narrator

truth

self-referential

autofiction

Opposites

Categories

Family