fictionalnarrative

Fictional narrative, a term sometimes encountered as fictionalnarrative in cataloging contexts, presents events, settings, and characters that are invented by the author rather than drawn from verifiable real events. It encompasses literary fiction, screenplays, theater, and other media, including interactive formats. The defining feature is speculative or imaginative content, pursued to entertain, explore ideas, or illuminate human experience through synthetic worlds.

The core components of a fictional narrative typically include plot, characters, setting, point of view, and theme. The plot organizes events into a beginning, middle, and end, while characters perceive, act, and change in response to conflict. Setting situates the story in time and place. Theme conveys underlying ideas the work engages with.

Forms range from long forms such as novels to shorter forms like short stories, as well as screenplays, radio plays, and digital or interactive fiction. Narratives may be linear or nonlinear, tightly plotted or exploratory, and may employ stylistic devices such as free indirect discourse, metafiction, unreliable narration, and multiple perspectives to shape reader experience.

Fictional narratives are studied for structure, voice, character development, world-building, and the ethics of representation. Scholars examine how narrative choices create meaning, evoke empathy, or critique social norms. The category also overlaps with subgenres like fantasy, realism, science fiction, and magical realism, illustrating the range of imagined experiences that narratives can encode.