fictionalcreated

Fictionalcreated is a term used in literary and media criticism to denote elements within a work that are explicitly presented as products of creation by the author or within the story’s own diegesis. It covers characters, places, objects, or narratives whose existence is framed as artificial construction rather than natural persistence in the fictional world. The term emphasizes authorial agency and the manufactured nature of the world, and it often intersects with meta-fiction and self-reflexive devices.

The concept has no fixed canonical origin but arises from discussions of how stories acknowledge their own making. It is commonly used in analyses of postmodern and experimental fiction, as well as in game studies and film theory, where creators occasionally reveal world-building steps, design documents, or in-universe statements about the construction of the setting.

In practice, fictionalcreated appears in scenarios such as a novel where a character contemplates that the entire setting was created by a writer, or a film that shows the production process of its own invented world. In video games or transmedia projects, in-game files, designer comments, or diegetic memos can function as fictionalcreated material, guiding players toward a consciousness of construction rather than seamless immersion.

Scholars use the idea to discuss audience awareness of authorship, parity between creator and creation, and the limits of verisimilitude. Critics caution that overemphasizing fictionalcreated can obscure narrative stakes, so the concept is typically applied as a descriptive tool rather than a normative claim.

See also metafiction, diegesis, worldbuilding, authorship.