Fictionemphasizing

Fictionemphasizing is a neologism in literary criticism describing the deliberate foregrounding of fictional status or fictional elements within a narrative. The term encompasses techniques that foreground storytelling as a constructed act, drawing attention away from assumed reality toward the artifices of fiction itself. While not widely standardized, fictionemphasizing is commonly discussed in analyses of metafiction and postmodern writing.

Techniques associated with fictionemphasizing include meta-narration, self-referential commentary, explicit statements about the narrative's fictionality, unreliable narration, embedded documents or texts, alternating narrative frames, and intertextual or pastiche practices. These methods may appear overtly or subtly, reminding readers that they are reading fiction rather than reporting on a real world.

Purposes of fictionemphasizing include critiquing realism, highlighting the constructed nature of stories, exploring authorial voice, and provoking readerly reflection on knowledge, truth, and representation. It can create playfulness, epistemic ambiguity, or theoretical distance that affects interpretation and engagement.

Related concepts are metafiction, self-reflexivity, and narrative foregrounding. Fictionemphasizing overlaps with postmodern strategies but may be found in various genres, including literary fiction, speculative fiction, and experimental works.

Notable discussions in criticism consider how these techniques function, often citing authors such as Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Paul Auster, and Margaret Atwood as practitioners whose works foreground storytelling as a crafted, reflective process.