metafiction means A form of self-referential literature concerned with the art and devices of fiction itself. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
Why “metafiction” is a great word
METAFICTION — [Noun] Fiction that self-consciously draws attention to its own constructed nature and the conventions of its own making. From meta- (meaning "beyond" or "about") + fiction, coined in 1970 by William H. Gass. Unlike realism, which seeks to erase its own artifice to mirror the world, or autofiction, which anchors itself in the author’s personal history, metafiction systematically dismantles the fourth wall to scrutinize the very act of storytelling. It is the novelist intruding to lament a character's thinness, the footnotes within a narrative that contradict the primary text, or the detective who realizes he is trapped in a poorly plotted book—a hall of mirrors where the truest honesty lies in the lie confessed, quietly proving that the most fundamental narrative is the one about why we tell stories at all.
Etymology
From meta- + fiction, coined in 1970 by William H. Gass
noun
- A form of self-referential literature concerned with the art and devices of fiction itself.“Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot (1984) and Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and Chatterton may be described as accomplished examples of historiographic metafiction, the kind of self-conscious, heavily parodic and experimental historical […]”