a work of fiction implies the inventive construction of an imaginary world and, most commonly, its fictionality is publicly acknowledged, so its audience typically expects it to deviate in some ways from the real world rather than presenting only characters who are actual people or descriptions that are factually true. fiction is generally understood as not adhering precisely to the real world, which also opens it up to various interpretations. characters and events within a fictional work may even be set in their own context entirely separate from the known universe: an independent fictional universe.