Faction
Related: fiction - fact - literature - non-fiction
A good example of faction is Tom Stoppard's Travesties (1974), which includes Tzara, Lenin, and James Joyce as characters; and most of Borges's factitious tales.
See also my work of interactive fiction, which is actually a work of interactive faction. [Jul 2006]
Definition
In literature, faction is a neologism used to describe literature based on real historical figures and actual events, woven together with fictional writing. An example of faction is the book According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge. This book describes the last few years of Samuel Johnson's life as seen through the eyes of Queeney Thrale, eldest daughter of Henry Thrale and Hester Thrale. Here, the word "faction" is a portmanteau of "fact" and "fiction". Faction is often disliked as confusing to people who are trying to find facts.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faction_%28literature%29
Autofiction
French writers during the late 1900s and early 2000s have consciously used the process of "Autofiction" (similar to the notion of "faction") to renew the novel (Christine Angot for example). "Autofiction" is a term invented by Serge Dubrovsky in 1977. It is a new sort of romanticised autobiography that resembles the writing of the romantics of the nineteenth century. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_French_literature [Jul 2006]