frame story

noun

1. a secondary story or stories embedded in the main story.

2. a narrative providing the framework for connecting a series of otherwise unrelated stories.

3. a literary device that uses such a narrative structure.

Example Sentences

And many of the stories, including the frame story, promote a misogynistic worldview.

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As a longtime storyteller, he also savored the primacy of narrative within the stories — particularly the frame story.

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The metafictional frame story of the novel is very different from the movie; it’s about a screenwriter, his failing marriage and his distant son.

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There is no such frame story in the stage musical, where the audience to Usnavi’s tale is, well, the audience, and there’s no epilogue involving Vanessa and Usnavi’s daughter.

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There’s a 10th-century document from Baghdad that describes the “Hazar Afsaneh” and mentions its frame story, about a wicked king who kills a concubine every night until one of these doomed wives manages to stave off her execution by telling him stories.

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