Metafiction is fiction that self-consciously draws attention to its own status as fiction. It breaks the illusion of reality in order to explore the nature of storytelling.

Characters may address the reader, comment on the plot as it unfolds, or struggle against the author who created them. The narrative may include discussions of how narratives work or may present alternative versions of the same events. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is an early example; twentieth-century writers such as Borges, Calvino, and Barth made metafiction a central mode of experimental fiction. The effect can be playful, philosophical, or both.

Metafiction is not merely experimental decoration. It raises questions about authorship, authority, the relationship between art and life, and the reader’s role in constructing meaning. Some readers find it liberating; others find it cold or self-absorbed. When successful, it deepens rather than destroys engagement by making the act of reading part of the story’s subject.

Fiction that knows it is fiction and lets the reader know it too is metafiction.