Metafiction

Aeiouna — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:27:23 -0700

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?

Re: Metafiction

HourglassThorne — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:04:26 -0700

What do you mean by "metafiction?"

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Saker Pup — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:42:36 -0700

You know, metafiction.

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Serena Darrin — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:14:56 -0700

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

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Aklo — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 05:58:51 -0700

Does a Frame Story count as metafiction?

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Aeiouna — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 21:20:19 -0700

From what I'm reading on Wikipedia, I would count it. (It says something about there being a story within a story, so it works for me, lol.)

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Saker Pup — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 22:53:38 -0700

There are some very rare exceptions to the rule when a frame story wouldn't be considered metafiction, but that's usually only when the frame and the story-within-a-story don't really relate to each other at all. For example: If there was a prolog and epilogue dealing with a parent reading a story to a child but neither the frame nor the story-within-a-story was influenced or affected by the other. I think it's harder to write a frame story that isn't metafiction, actually. =/

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Aeiouna — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:38:47 -0700

"For example: If there was a prolog and epilogue dealing with a parent reading a story to a child but neither the frame nor the story-within-a-story was influenced or affected by the other." Like The Princess Bride, then?

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Aeiouna — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:39:36 -0700

(Not that my NaNo is similar to Aklo's - Mine's about my MC trying to write a novel, and what happens to keep her from doing so.)

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Saker Pup — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 02:27:39 -0700

I thought of The Princess Bride at first but the frame breaks into the story-within-a-story on occasion with the kid commenting and such, and it's so full of tropes that it kinda gets its metafiction stamps elsewhere... At which point I couldn't think of a good example of a frame story that wasn't metafiction but if it's just "Once upon a time..." and "... and they lived happily ever after." with no crossover between the two stories or any juxtaposition that would be apparent to the reader throughout the two stories, than maybe. ... aaand, I think I just eviscerated my point. Ha. Reversal: Yes, all frame stories are meta.

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Aunt_Dew — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 02:36:36 -0700

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.

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Aklo — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:12:51 -0700

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.

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studentofrhythm — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:39:38 -0700

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

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Saker Pup — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:42:38 -0700

Aaand yes. Given, it's the writing itself that will really tip the scale but just based on your synopsis, it sounds like meta to me.

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studentofrhythm — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:24:19 -0700

Thank you - and now I'll be deliberately trying to make it so.

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Harhama — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:53:53 -0700

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.

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flopart — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:19:31 -0700

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.

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Aeiouna — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:16:44 -0700

Uber-meta!

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Aeiouna — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:19:10 -0700

Also, your story sounds totally epic. If only I could read Finnish (learning to do so is on my list of things to accomplish though!)

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Saker Pup — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:42:47 -0700

[quote=studentofrhythm]and now I'll be deliberately trying to make it so.[/quote] Did I just influence someone else's writing process? O_O Shit. I'm not used to having this level of power over others. Seriously, I'd be careful about trying to fall within a genre. Unless you're writing parody, subvert. It's more fun. (Wait... would subversive meta be more meta or would it just be mainstream literary fiction?)

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Mariana OConnor — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:38:08 -0700

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.

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studentofrhythm — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:45:07 -0700

Oh yeah, don't worry. I never really try to stick to any genre convention anyway, which is why I always poke around several fora. If there *is* an impulse in me to stick to a genre convention, it's not wanting to be seen as arrogant in flouting them, or a hipster poser: "genres are so cliche, you know . . ." As long as I'm not trying to do either I think I'll be able to relax and just write the thing.

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Saker Pup — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:24:38 -0700

[quote=studentofrhythm]genres are so cliche[/quote] Now I want that on a t-shirt... to wear ironically... (meta-hipster?)

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Frances — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:24:22 -0700

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.

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Aeiouna — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:47:27 -0700

Sounds very meta to me. Fourth wall breaking.

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wrbcosta — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 23:12:49 -0700

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.

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aslightapocalypse — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 02:27:49 -0700

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

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Aeiouna — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:15:45 -0700

That sounds awesome!

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Aeiouna — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:18:06 -0700

This is my first year doing metafiction (previously done Sci-Fi, Young Adult with a dash of LGBT, and Supernatural/Spiritual).

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Lydia_Ember — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:12:41 -0700

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

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Yirggzmb — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:50:20 -0700

On the theory of frame stories being metafiction, that means the vague idea have is at least dipping it's toe in the metafiction pool. I'm thinking about a story that's about a tv show that a couple of kids are watching, with the kids as a frame. I haven't decided if I want the kids to just be at the beginning and end of the novel to set up the idea, or if I want them butting in with comments periodically, or even if I'll be writing chapters as "episodes" with each chapter framed by the kids.

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Illyrias_Acolyte — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:08:42 -0700

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.

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Frances — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:38:35 -0700

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.

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Aklo — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:49:53 -0700

That sounds great :D

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collective solipsism — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:51:50 -0700

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.

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DarknessShadows — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:38:08 -0700

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.

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Rubber_ducky — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:29:50 -0700

[quote=DarknessShadows] 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. [/quote] That sounds amazing! My novel isn't purely meta-fictional since it only becomes Meta when the main character (in her madness) believes herself to be a character in a novel.

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Aeiouna — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 04:02:01 -0700

That sounds totally epic.

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Aeiouna — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 04:04:28 -0700

1. That sounds awesome and I want to read it. 2. Yay someone else is already thinking about next year! I get weird looks when I mention the chick lit novel I swear I'm keeping tucked away November 2012.

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FemaleWriter — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:00:38 -0700

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.

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Netherworld_Inc — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:53:25 -0700

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

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Absent Minded Wanderer — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:52:39 -0700

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.

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redheadedgnomegirl — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:39:45 -0700

I've definitely got a metafiction on my hands. It's a sort of Noir mystery novel where the MC realizes that he's in a novel and because he's a hard-headed PI, doesn't want to do as the author says. He starts manipulating the text to his advantage while trying to foil the antagonist mobster kingpin's scheme while still asserting his independence from the author, since he insists on doing things his way. The author keeps trying to get things under control, and the antagonist begins trying to forcibly break the fourth wall, escape to the Real World, and ensure an ultimate victory over both the MC and the author.

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DarknessShadows — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 07:23:08 -0700

Kinda like mine, except my protagonist wants to destroy the writer's world. And all the other writers' worlds. Including the one he, the MC, created.

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Brynn — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 05:18:13 -0700

Apparently I am categorically incapable of writing anything but metafiction. I was writing the first couple thousand of my story, and it was going to be normal person taken into sci fi kinda like the Hitchhiker's Guide. However, after struggling through a couple days, my story rejected itself and a voice yelled "CUT!" and it turned out that the beginning was my MC failing his hero exam. Now because he failed every practical exam, but did great on the theory, he is transferring to the Moriarty School of Villainy at Nemeses Technical Institute.

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BuriedinSpace — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:37:50 -0700

I am. It's a memoir with a double binded edge of 'I might be lying, how could you tell' built in and also meta-fictionalized 'comments' on the text by the people being spoken of. And also an introduction super-meta laying everything out.

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Mariana OConnor — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 07:34:36 -0800

Okay, I've tumbled into Metafiction now. My narrator kindly informed me on the 31st October that the book I'm writing is actually the answer to a fictional book written by another character of the same time frame, and we're going to meet that character and see his book take shape, and the narrator keeps drawing attention to the fact that he's writing... and his wife keeps making him change things that he remembers wrongly or that show him in a better light than he should be.

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invdrzim — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:20:48 -0800

My style of writing is inherently a critique on writing and storytelling and memory, itself. I don't know if it comes off as pretentious or annoying, but it makes me chuckle.

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Kejaba — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 16:43:27 -0800

Hmm. I think I may fit in here, but I'm honestly not sure. My plot is kind of a frame and story, but the important events occur in the frame. To be specific yet brief, there's this kid who works at a coffee shop and befriends an old homeless man who reads the paper in there every day. The old man tells the kid stories of his grand life, with the stories taking up the bulk of the novel, but the only really plot advancing events will occur in the actual coffee shop. So I ask, metafiction or not?

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Cloudniner — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:14:43 -0800

Yay, other people writing meta! Mine's quite meta, it's about a Student Narrator questioning why Narrators can't break the fourth wall and what happens after she graduates from the university Narrators go to.

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invdrzim — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:44:34 -0800

Ha!

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Will64 — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:25:06 -0800

like, fiction that breaks the fourth wall?

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Cloudniner — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 15:20:35 -0800

Yep! If the characters realize that they are characters, or they talk to the author, or something like that, then it's metafiction!

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wrbcosta — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:43:09 -0800

I started this month trying to write a mystery novel. No way. I'm doing metafiction now. My narrator started digressing, talking about the task of creating a character. Now he has taken over the narrative, but I don't know where to take the story. I'm open to suggestions and I'll keep watching this thread for support. Good luck to us all!

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Cloudniner — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:04:40 -0800

I just realized that, in a way, there are in fact two Fourth Walls in my novel. o.O Let me explain. A Narrator is Narrating her life story. So there's the Wall between her and that story, and then the wall between myself and that story. Both are broken multiple times.

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rtan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:01:01 -0800

I've always wanted to try writing metafiction, so this year I have. It's been great fun. My novel is about a teacher who has written several short stories in her free time over the last few years and has attempted to start her first novel. Unfortunately, she finds this orders of magnitude more difficult, and eventually she quits in disgust with two hundred pages written. When a freak snowstorm cancels classes for at least several days, she decides to take advantage of the gift of free time and attempt to resurrect her novel. She begins re-writing it in a frenzy and it stays on her mind for hours afterwards. Her bother, a cop, asks to stay at her place since getting home would be difficult and he has to go back on duty early in the morning. She wakes up in the middle of the night to find that her brother has disappeared. Since they are snowed in, his vanishing has no logical explanation, until her search leads her to find a doorway in a closet which was never there before. When she goes through, she finds herself in the setting of her novel (and many of her short stories). This leads to her meeting the main character of her novel, and then that the events of the novel are playing out. Unfortunately, she chose to kill the main character's wife and daughter so as to kick off the main events of his story. I don't write with the intention of making a statement, but as writers, we are gods of our own little worlds. What would happen if the decisions we made in the act of composition were real for the people involved?

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rtan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:03:47 -0800

Also, to add a different level of meat to the metafiction, I have donated an unfinished novel of my own, the first I ever attempted, to the protagonist of this story, so while my character is dealing with the angst of being a first-time novelist, I am, myself, closing the book on my own first failed foray into the jungle of writing novels. Totally deep and stuff.

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inuitmonster — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:57:21 -0800

Mine has metafictional elements, but I would not say it is full on meta fiction. These elements are: 1.at one point two of the characters discuss whether they would be convincingly deep characters if they were character in a novel. 2. a note from an unnamed editor refers to two missing chapters of the novel. 3. as a pathetically transparent way of padding out the book, at several points the characters simply read some music writing I had to do at the start of November.

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inuitmonster — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:58:26 -0800

[quote=rtan] Also, to add a different level of meat to the metafiction, I have donated an unfinished novel of my own, the first I ever attempted, to the protagonist of this story, so while my character is dealing with the angst of being a first-time novelist, I am, myself, closing the book on my own first failed foray into the jungle of writing novels. Totally deep and stuff. [/quote] right on. Just remembered that in mine it mentions that one of the characters is reading a published version of my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel.