Fiction is the classification for any story or similar work derived from imagination—in other words, not based strictly on history or fact. Fiction can be expressed in a variety of formats, including writings, live performances, films, television programs, animations, video games, and role-playing games, though the term originally and most commonly refers to the narrative forms of literature (see literary fiction), including the novel, novella, short story, and play. Fiction does not refer to a specific mode or genre, unless used in its narrowest sense to mean a "literary narrative". Fiction is traditionally regarded as the opposite of non-fiction, whose creators assume responsibility for presenting only the historical and factual truth; however, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction can be blurred, for example, in postmodern literature.
A work of fiction is an act of creative invention; its total faithfulness to reality is not typically assumed by its audience, and so it is not expected to present only characters who are actual people or descriptions that are factually accurate. Instead, the context of fiction is generally open to interpretation, due to fiction's freedom from adhering exactly to the real world. Characters and events within a fictional work may even be openly set in their own context entirely separate from the known universe: a fictional universe.