Metafiction

I was waiting to see if someone else would post one of these, but it looks like it's not happening, so I'm taking the initiative. :)

Anyone else writing metafiction this year?

I'm not writing it, but that sounds like it could be fun. :) Ideas for next year, I guess?

Does a Frame Story count as metafiction?

I love metafiction novels, but I am not planning on writing one this year as it is my first year.

I think I'll start with just one story.

However, I am happy to give my honest opinion on your ideas if you want.

What I most like about Metafiction is how it draws the reader into thinking about the book itself as an object, and themselves in relation to the book.

I've just decided that the frame should be about a writer who's not quite writing what she wants because the supernatural creatures that live behind the paper she writes on, keep popping up in the stories, so I think that would definitely count as metafiction.

I guess I might be . . . if anyone cares to read my novel synopsis and say yea or nay then yay.

I'm writing about a novelist struggling and failing at writing his first novel. I'm planning on writing it in the form of his diary entries. There's also an additional level of editor commenting on his entries. Going for maximum meta.

I think my story just wandered over slightly into the world of meta fiction, because I started writing in the midst of applying for grad school for art history, so my story is FULL of art allusions, and then I decided to insert the alluded art as if it were color plates in an art book. The story isn't written as if it's a textbook, but it's hints at it sometimes.

For example, "He was born the same day Durer completed Melanchonia I (fig. 1), and..."

I think that makes it a wee bit meta.

My nano's going to teeter on the edge of meta. I'm still not sure if it's going to fall in, though. The main conceit of the novel is that it's the main character's memoirs, so he's probably going to refer to the fact he's writing a few times and then there's the fact that the tale itself is a parody of other literary devices, tropes, cliches and plots, and I don't know how obvious I'm going to make that.

So... I'm dipping a toe into the world of metafiction, but I'm not plunging in head first.

I'm pretty sure I've gone meta. I've not quite figured it out yet – probably because I have no plot to speak of – but there's going to be interplay between me as the author and the protagonist / narrator. It's pretty much a frame as well, with the narrator constructing mini stories that are based on her love of fanfiction, featuring herself in AU scenarios, which she, rather than I as the author, writes.

Last year's Nano, my most productive of all, which I kept on writing until June this year, was pure metafiction. It was fun, but... exhausting (good luck to anyone trying). It was about a schizophrenic's struggle to write his first novel, while dealig with his ex-girlfriend and his therapist. This year I'm doing straight, unapologetic fiction.

BLESS THIS THREAD OH GOSH I LOVE YOU ALL FOR INTRODUCING A WORD I HAD NEVER KNOWN

I came across this when trying to figure out what exactly my novel genre is. I would certainly say it is metafiction. My MC is writing his memoir, basically. And it's probably going to be mostly written as if he's typing it up in a computer document, with some bits written in a journal thing and some bits dialogue and interaction. I was calling it Young Adult for a while, because he's a teenager, but metafiction fits much better. It doesn't exactly deal with Young Adult concepts as much as other novels might.

And now that I've finished freaking out over this magical word, it's 5 am and why am I still awake? /crawls back to my corner of the NaNos and soon falls asleep

Yep. My fourth wall has a door and my characters occasionally pop in.

It's based on a little comic I unintentionally made in class (hence the title BC's Notes). Sometimes the story followed my character's lives and sometimes it reflected what was happening in class or my life. For example, when we were learning that men wrote a lot of poetry in pre-1600 Japan, I had a sub plot where one guy kept making everyone commit suicide since his poems were so bad. Granted, there was a way to revive these characters so I only ended up killing about 3 overall. Sometimes they also commented on what I wrote. Two came up with the conclusion that I must be evil since I killed more good guys than bad. lol

One story that I desperately want to do next year is about a gratuitous Mary Sue character who is unknowingly warping her canon, and when she is shown what she's doing, she thinks better of it and grows as a character.

Illyrias, I love that. Such a good idea and it would be such good fun. My main character is pretty much a Mary Sue, or would be if she were a character in a book. Except she is a character in a book and she knows it. Reconciling that is going to be... interesting.

I don't think mine is really metafiction, but I adore metafictional styles and may be borrowing a few tropes here and there.

Like footnotes. Sooo many footnotes.

Basically, the "main" story will be the narrative of two guys living their lives in this rising dictatorship, whatever. However, in order to explain the bigger picture side of things, there will be some academic, sociological texts / explanations inserted wherever they fit. The author of these will probably end up getting his own narrative later on, though, which will explain the weird footnoted essays.

It might get interesting if this sociologist manages to meet up with either of the other main characters, though.

I have found my home! :)

Mine's about a bunch of people who realize they're a bunch of characters, subject to the whims of some unknown creator who has a plan for them all. They're not happy about it.

I think mine might fit in here. I have a few ideas, but none of them are strong ideas. So, what if one character from one idea writes the other ideas?

The strongest of my ideas is about the beginning of a dystopia (I think). The point of view would be from a couple that happen to be members of a group that a newly elected government blames for a "terrorist" attack. So, they'd eventually get detained. The wife, I'm thinking, is going to be a struggling writer who hasn't had much luck. She would write a story that could be a reflection of what/how she feels throughout the main story.

Another idea is that it's the future and a character finds this story (and maybe a story within a story) and reads it to someone else. They could possibly comment on how things are "then and now".

Hmmm....this might be interesting.

Mine's a little bit metafiction-y. My MC is a writer, and I'm including some of his work.

I've blatantly used Metafiction in other mediums before, but because there will be people who are writing stories in my main universe (I'll call it the Overworld), One of the characters will write a story about people with medium awareness which will eventually lead the characters in the Overworld to have a conversation about how it's impossible to be certain that you're not fictional.