fabulator

Fabulator is a term used mainly in literary and critical contexts to denote a storyteller or writer who fabricates narratives in a way that blurs the line between fact and fiction. The word derives from the Latin fabula, meaning "story," and is closely related to the French fabulateur, a term that translates to fabulist. In English, the more common word is typically fabulist, but fabulator appears in discussions of narrative technique to emphasize the act of fabulation itself.

In practice, a fabulator may employ techniques associated with fabulation, metafiction, or magical realism to present invented events alongside or within a framework that suggests genuine experience. The aim is often not deception for its own sake but a deliberate questioning of what counts as truth, memory, or authority. Fabulators might construct layered or composite worlds, dismantle conventional causality, or reveal social and political critique through invented mythologies and parable-like fictions.

The term is not widely standardized and tends to appear in scholarly discourse rather than as a self-applied label. Critics use it to highlight authors who foreground storytelling as a strategic act—creating, reorganizing, and interrogating narratives to illuminate broader truths or to destabilize received narratives. Because of its rarity, fabulator can be interpreted variably, and some readers may equate it with the more common fabulist or with related practices such as postmodern storytelling or speculative fiction.

See also: fabulist, fabulation, metafiction, magical realism.