Way in which an author structures his story or novel by providing a context for its telling. For example, Steven Brust's fantasy novel The Phoenix Guards takes the form of a work of history, and the events in the novel are presented as having actually happened - to the extent that the history's "author" adds highly opinionated commentary of his own to the narrative. William Goldman used a similar device for The Princess Bride, claiming that it is an abridged version of a longer work by one "S. Morgenstern". This fiction allowed Goldman to bypass a lot of exposition that he personally found dull to write and skip to the exciting parts.