History Main / DirectLineToTheAuthor

* ''Film/TheManWhoWouldBeKing'': The movie shows Creator/RudyardKipling getting told the story by Peachy, the former of whom then presumably later writes the book of the same name. In the original book, the story is told to an unnamed reporter who is very clearly Kipling's AuthorAvatar, meaning the movie just made it more explicit.

* Elizabeth Peters' ''Literature/AmeliaPeabody'' novels are framed as being excerpts from the rather extensive and detailed journals Mrs. Emerson kept over many decades, starting approximately with her initial trip to Egypt in the 1880s, during which she met the man who would become her husband. Later volumes also include excerpts from "Manuscript H", written by Amelia's son Ramses. Elizabeth Peters takes on the role of the editor of these journals in the author's notes, which allows some extensive LampshadeHanging: she often expresses exasperation at the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the text, such as the signs that the journals were rewritten many years later with an eye towards publication ("Little did I know..."), and Amelia's tendency to put her own opinions in the mouths of her famous contemporaries.

** There was an episode where the League travels to a different, [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]]-like world featuring some villains and superheroes that resemble those of Franchise/GreenLantern's favorite childhood series. After some initial confusion, ComicBook/MartianManhunter posits the authors wrote under "some sort of psychic link to this world" unknowingly. After finding the graves of his heroes and hidden wreckage from war, he finds that the reason the series was canceled was that [[CrapsackWorld the bad guys won]] and most of the rest of the world is [[spoiler:all just an illusion created by the villain.]] Inspired by the ''Flash'' story mentioned above under Comic Books, and it's follow-ups.

** The first two-thirds of ''Literature/TheSpaceTrilogy'', aka the Ransom novels, are based on the premise that Lewis is the ghostwriter for the "real" Doctor Ransom, whose name has been changed but whose bizarre interplanetary adventures are true. (In real RealLife, Ransom was [[WriteWhoYouKnow based on]] Lewis's good friend Creator/JRRTolkien.) ''Out of the Silent Planet'' even ends with a chapter explaining how the Lewis came to learn of the story from Ransom, and why they decided to publish the story in the guise of fiction: to avoid reprisals from the RealLife counterparts of the villains, and because the events were simply too outrageous to be believed if they were published as nonfiction. This is then followed by a letter from Ransom [[SelfDeprecation pointing out all the details of the adventure that Lewis got wrong]] or were simply too esoteric to convey in writing. The next novel, ''Perelandra'' continues with the Agent Hypothesis in the text, but includes a preface stating that all the human characters are fictitious and non-allegorical. The final novel, ''That Hideous Strength'', drops all pretense, and in fact events in the book flatly contradict actual then-current political history.

* ''Podcast/CoolKidsTable'': In ''Hogwarts: The New Class'', almost everything from ''Harry Potter'' is real, and JK Rowling is a squib who wrote dramatizations of Harry's adventures. [=McGonagall=] was the one who recommended Creator/MaggieSmith to play her in the films. More importantly, the players are all muggle-borns whose records were lost and never got to develop their powers.

* The pronunciation guide at the back of the ''Literature/{{Deverry}}'' books by Katherine Kerr includes references to an ongoing fued between the author and a professor of Elvish about the simplifications she uses. There are also a few references in the text itself suggesting that the books were written by a Deverrian, some centuries after the period in which they're set. The final book names this author as Cadda Cerrmor, which in Deverrian would be pronounced "[[AuthorAvatar Katha Kerr-mor]]".

* ''Literature/ThePrisonerOfZenda'' was inspired by the events of Royal Flash as told by our hero to Anthony Hope.

* In the same way as Creator/PhilipJoseFarmer claimed to have interviewed the actual John Clayton, Earl of Greystoke for ''Literature/TarzanAlive'', many of those contining the concept of the Wold-Newton Universe explain that they have some kind of contact in the world of heroic-adventurers-who-everyone-wrongly-thinks-are-fictional. [[https://ratmmjess.tripod.com/wold6a.html Jess Nevins's "M.N."]] complains about him giving the articles humorous titles, [[http://www.pjfarmer.com/secret/content/backstory.htm Dennis Powers's "David Vincent"]] comes across as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and Al Schroeder claimed to have begun ''Supermania'' series (no longer online) after being rescued by the man himself.

* ''Film/DrJekyllAndMsHyde'': The film portrays ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde'' as being based on a real man, Richard's great-grandfather, who was Creator/RobertLouisStevenson's friend, and the inspiration for his novel.

* ''Film/{{Fargo}}'': Opens with a quote that reads "This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred." This is, for the most part, completely untrue. The Coen Brothers did take inspirations from various True Crime stories in the writing of the script (a body being disposed of in a wood chipper, a man hiring hitmen to kill his wife) but the events, plot, characters, and settings were all completely fictional. Joel Coen went on to say "The story was completely made up. Or, as we like to say, the only thing true about it is that it's a story."

* In TheVerse of ''LightNovel/NyarukoCrawlingWithLove'', the Franchise/CthulhuMythos was based on stories told to Creator/HPLovecraft by aliens claiming to be gods. The main character is [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname called]] Nyarlathotep (Nyarko for short), and is a Nyarlathotepian alien, but insists she isn't the same one Lovecraft wrote about (though she does claim to have pretty much all of his abilities, like 1,000 forms).

* Creator/PhilipJoseFarmer:
** In his novels ''Tarzan Alive'' and ''Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life,'' he claims that Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent were just the biographers of Literature/{{Tarzan}} and Literature/DocSavage. He claims that their books were highly fictionalized and sensationalized and presents somewhat more mundane, but still sensational versions of the stories that correct various factual inaccuracies and continuity errors. For example, he explains that whenever Tarzan encountered a lion, a plains-dwelling animal, in the jungle, it was actually a leopard and Burroughs exaggerated because lions were bigger and more dangerous looking. He also tries to explain away both characters' great strength and intelligence by claiming their [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wold_Newton_family ancestors were irradiated by a meteor]] and that other relatives of Tarzan and Savage whose ancestors were exposed to that radiation include [[Literature/PrideAndPrejudice Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy]], Literature/SherlockHolmes, Literature/FuManchu, and Literature/BulldogDrummond.
** There's a lovely moment in ''Tarzan Alive'' when Tarzan tells Farmer the actual story behind one particular book, adding that the secondary hero's love interest was [[DownerEnding killed by a hit-and-run in New York City some six months after the book ends]]. Farmer comments that he likes Burroughs' version better (the lovers stay in a [[LostWorld medieval city]] in Africa), and Tarzan smiles and says, "He knew what he was doing."
** Edgar Rice Burroughs himself used the Direct Line to the Author approach for Tarzan, the Barsoom novels, and much of his other work. This makes Farmer's approach of representing literary agent material as a different literary agent. In the Barsoom novels, Burroughs went so far as to claim that John Carter was his beloved uncle.
** In Farmer's short story "Literature/AfterKingKongFell", Tim claims to his granddaughter that both ''Film/KingKong1933'' and its 1932 novelization are mere dramatizations of events that took place in 1931, that he experienced first-hand.

* Tim Lucas's ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' novel, ''The Book of Renfield'', explains that Stoker just cleaned up the original journals and such.

** Samuel Richardson's ''Pamela'' and ''Clarissa'',

* ''An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871'' by William Robert Loosley, edited and with commentary by Creator/DavidLangford, describes Loosley [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin meeting an alien]], with Langford's commentary explaining how he found the (fake) manuscript in the (real) secret drawer of a desk his wife had inherited, built by her ancestor the (real) William Loosley. Langford then had to spend ''years'' telling ufologists that he'd made it up. [[ConspiracyTheorist Not all of them believed him]].

** Played with in ''Sherlock Holmes at the 1902 Fifth Test'' by Stanley Shaw. It begins with a foreword in which Shaw claims to have found the manuscript in the attic in his grandfather's handwriting, proceeds with his grandfather's account of how he helped Sherlock Holmes foil an attempt to sabotage the final match of the 1902 Ashes cricket series, and ends with an afterword in which [[spoiler:Shaw notes that the account couldn't possibly be accurate, because his grandfather had a leg amputated before 1902, so he's not claiming it's a true story, just that it's very old previously-undiscovered fanfic]].
** An interesting example at the start of James Lovegrove's ''Cthulhu Casebooks'' series of mashup novels. The introduction to the first volume, ''Shadows in Shadwell'', carefully explains how Lovegrove got these manuscripts from the estate of one Henry Prothero Lovecraft (a distant relative of both the ''other'' Creator/HPLovecraft and Lovegrove himself) and that analysis suggests they are genuine. Nonetheless, since they're supposedly Watson claiming that nearly everything he wrote was a deception designed to conceal ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow, Lovegrove's introduction suspects they may be some kind of bizarre hoax. His straighter Holmes pastiches are referenced, suggesting in-universe Lovegrove is loath to believe the other Watson manuscripts he edited were a pack of lies (not to mention not wanting to believe he's in a CosmicHorrorStory). By the introductions to the second and third books, he's become less sceptical (and the epilogue to the third book reveals [[spoiler: in-univese Lovegrove has GoneMadFromTheRevelation]]). A short story in the same setting opens with an e-mail from the lawyer who dealt with Henry Lovecraft's estate, saying he found a further letter from Watson, and rather sarcastically adding that he is happy to offer his services if Lovegrove's apparent habit of making money from other people's manuscripts result in him needing a lawyer.

** The mystery novel ''Murder at the ABA'' takes the form of Asimov's dramatization of events as related to him by fictional character Darius Just (who bears a noticeable resemblance to real-world author Creator/HarlanEllison). Asimov includes himself as a minor character in the story, and the book includes occasional [[FootnoteFever footnote comments]] by Just and responses by Asimov.

* Steve Hockensmith's mystery/Western ''Holmes on the Range'' (about a cowboy who is inspired to take up detective work after reading several Sherlock Holmes stories) doesn't just use the LiteraryAgentHypothesis but starts off being Direct Line to the Author as well. The story itself uses the original literary agent hypothesis -- it sets out Holmes as a real person, one of the villains is related to a character from the Holmes story "The Noble Bachelor", and [[spoiler:it's eventually revealed that the book is set two years after "The Final Problem"]].

* The short stories in ''[[FanFic/YouGotHaruhiRolled You Got SasakiRolled!]]'' are allegedly written by three characters from [[LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya the original series.]] In a twist, the "literary agent" (that is, the author) is killed off at the very beginning and the story was supposedly uploaded to Website/FanFictionDotNet by his ghost.

* Bonnie [=McBird=]]'s Sherlock Holmes novels start with a foreword explaining she got these unpublished manuscripts from a mysterious woman known only as Lydia. In all of them the case is more personal to either Holmes or Watson than usual, implying that this is why Watson never published them.