Fiction is literature that describes imaginary events and people. It is invented rather than strictly factual, though it may draw heavily on real experience and historical settings.

The category includes novels, short stories, novellas, and some narrative poems and plays. What unites them is the creation of a narrative world that does not claim to be a literal record of actual events. Within that world, characters act, conflicts develop, and meanings emerge. Readers accept the fictional contract: they know the story is made up, yet they respond to it as if it matters.

Fiction can incorporate real places, historical figures, and autobiographical material without ceasing to be fiction; the governing intention is imaginative rather than documentary. The boundary with nonfiction is sometimes blurred by hybrid forms, yet the distinction remains useful. Fiction’s special power lies in its freedom to shape experience into patterns that reveal truths unavailable to straightforward reportage.

A narrative that is offered as invention rather than as factual record belongs to fiction.