: Is my work fiction or non-fiction? I am currently working on a story. I would like to publish this on a literary magazine website, and this website has only three categories - fiction, non-fiction,

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While it sounds like what you're writing is not Creative Nonfiction, this essay about it may help clarify your self-description: www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/what-creative-nonfiction

"Creative” doesn’t mean inventing what didn’t happen, reporting and describing what wasn’t there. It doesn’t mean that the writer has a license to lie. The cardinal rule is clear—and cannot be violated. This is the pledge the writer makes to the reader—the maxim we live by, the anchor of creative nonfiction: “You can’t make this stuff up!”

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This is "autobiographical fiction," which is a very common subgenre of fiction. In fact, it's so ubiquitous that people tend to assume this is what most writers are writing unless there's clear reason to believe otherwise.

There's no reason to treat this or present this as anything other than fiction (outside of whatever personal fallout there might be if the real life inspirations recognize themselves in your characters).

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It's fiction.

It's probably closest to memoir, which is basically autobiography, a type of non-fiction. But then you say:

The exact course of events in the story has never really happened in
my personal life, but each piece does come from my personal life. The
other characters are based on real people...

If you're not certain (or if you'd really like to submit it as non-fiction), ask the publisher.

It's fiction based on real life. Your goal is the story and your inspiration is reality. But you aren't trying to document the historical record. It may be thinly disguised fiction, but it's still fiction.

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