Editing Story within a story (section)

====Play or film within a book====
''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' by [[Thomas Pynchon]] has several characters seeing a play called ''The Courier's Tragedy'' by the fictitious [[English Renaissance theatre|Jacobean]] [[playwright]] Richard Wharfinger. The events of the play broadly mirror those of the novel and give the character Oedipa Maas a greater context to consider her predicament; the play concerns a feud between two rival mail distribution companies, which appears to be ongoing to the present day, and in which, if this is the case, Oedipa has found herself involved. As in ''[[Hamlet]]'', the director makes changes to the original script; in this instance, a couplet that was added, possibly by religious zealots intent on giving the play extra moral gravity, are said only on the night that Oedipa sees the play.

From what Pynchon relates, this is the only mention in the play of Thurn and Taxis' rivals' name—Trystero—and it is the seed for the conspiracy that unfurls. A significant portion of [[Walter Moers]]' ''Labyrinth of Dreaming Books'' is an [[ekphrasis]] on the subject of an epic puppet theater presentation. Another example is found in [[Samuel Delany]]'s ''[[Trouble on Triton]]'', which features a theater company that produces elaborate staged spectacles for randomly selected single-person audiences. Plays produced by the "Caws of Art" theater company also feature in Russell Hoban's modern fable, ''[[The Mouse and His Child]]''. [[Raina Telgemeier]]'s best-selling [[Drama (graphic novel)|''Drama'']] is a graphic novel about a middle-school musical production, and the tentative romantic fumblings of its cast members.

In [[Manuel Puig]]'s [[Kiss of the Spider Woman (novel)|''Kiss of the Spider Woman'']], ekphrases on various old movies, some real, and some fictional, make up a substantial portion of the narrative. In [[Paul Russell (novelist)|Paul Russell]]'s ''Boys of Life'', descriptions of movies by director/antihero Carlos (loosely inspired by controversial director [[Pier Paolo Pasolini]]) provide a narrative counterpoint and add a touch of surrealism to the main narrative. They additionally raise the question of whether works of artistic genius justify or atone for the sins and crimes of their creators. Auster's  ''[[The Book of Illusions]]'' (2002) and Theodore Roszak's [[Flicker (novel)|''Flicker'']] (1991) also rely heavily on fictional films within their respective narratives.