Metafiction

"A Conversation with My Father" is a metafictional story; that is, a fiction about fiction. The inclusion of a story within a story, the descriptions of the narrator writing that story, and the narrator and her father's conversation about fiction are all elements of metafiction. Metafictional stones prompt the reader to think about how stories are structured, why writers develop their stories as they do, and what expectations readers might bring to stones. These issues make up the content of the discussion between the narrator and her father. Why, the father asks, does the narrator not write simple narratives about people who are familiar to us, rather than writing about "people sitting in trees talking senselessly, voices from who knows where?"—a reference to one of the narrator's (and Paley's) earlier stories. But to the narrator, fiction should reflect one's experience in life, and the two versions of...