What do you call a novel that is mostly made up of non-fictional stories?

Solution 1:

The adjective fictionalised is often used in this sense, as in the real-life basis was "made fictional". However, that word is sometimes also used of the purely fictional.

"A fictionalised account of..." can be clearer that it means fictionalised in that sense.

A subset of such novels would be romans à clef (sing. roman à clef, sometimes found hyphenated, and occasionally without the grave on the a). Such novels are disguised accounts where names and dates are changed and other degrees of artistic license are taken, but where there is a strong correspondence between them and reality (or at least, the authors side of the story).

Solution 2:

I came across the term "creative nonfiction" just the other day. I think this quite aptly fits what you describe (do a Google search and you'll see it has a lot of usage in the field). It is very much the equivalent of "experimental fiction", but for nonfiction.

Having said that, if the focus on the writing is on the nonfiction elements rather than on creativity/experimentalism, I prefer the term "fictionalised nonfiction" in general, or "fictionalised autobiography/memoir" in particular.

If you are interested in what happens when you fail to disclose that your autobiography is fictionalised, see "Controversy" here (where James Frey's A Million Little Pieces is described as "semi-fictional"). In this case (from the same link):

the Brooklyn Public Library went as far as recataloging Frey's book as fiction, although it appears most other libraries have not followed suit

Incidentally, the semi-autobiographical "dramatic recount" of the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried, is classed on Amazon as fiction...

Solution 3:

If it were a collection of autobiographical anecdotes, I'd call it a memoir. Thus, combined with John Hanna’s answer, you could call it the fictionalized memoirs of the author.