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Review of The Perfect Gray

December 14, 2020

guest post, Igor Livramento, literary fiction, perfect gray, review

This review of The Perfect Gray is obviously not mine – though it would’ve been an interesting exercise to try to review my own novel. Still, this particular review of The Perfect Gray is offered by my friend and fellow academic, author, and creative-writing advisor, Igor da Silva Livramento. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

Important Note: At the beginning of the process, when I asked Igor if he’d like to review The Perfect Gray, I set down two imperative requirements: i) he would have complete editorial freedom; ii) similarly, he would have full freedom to critique The Perfect Gray as he objectively saw it. What follows from this point on, is his personal, independent review of The Perfect Gray as he saw it. I have only offered some very minor formatting recommendations, for consistency within the blog. I have also suggested the added links to other blog posts.

The Perfect Gray Novel

Unassuming title, aye? To be fair, it is accurate by my book (pun intended).

I must admit: I didn’t expect it to be such a good novel. I simply had to drop everything I was reading to beat The Perfect Gray as quickly as possible. It had been over a year since I’d read something so intense, exciting, memorable – simply unforgettable.

review of the perfect gray — *The Perfect Gray*, paperback cover

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The Perfect Gray – New Literary Fiction Novel

October 12, 2020

Fiction

book, fiction, literary fiction, perfect gray

So, here we are… A new literary-fiction novel – though, hey, what’s so “novel” about a novel? The Perfect Gray is a project I began almost as an exercise. The idea came soon after I wrote the post on concept fiction. Quite frankly, I had absolutely no plan in mind regarding plot or characters, which of course is the whole point behind concept fiction.

At 70,000 words, The Perfect Gray is within the usual range of literary fiction word counts, yet I still find it a bit surprising how little it took me to complete it – about 5 weeks.

What is it about? I’ll let one of the character in The Perfect Gray to answer that:

It’s always hard for writers to tell you what their book is about. But I think you’ll like it.

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Concept Fiction: a How-to Guide for Intelligent Narratives

August 11, 2020

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

concept, creativity, fiction, genre, imagination, literary fiction, narrative, writing

By “concept”, we usually refer to an abstract theme, topic, or group of ideas. And so, in this context, concept fiction refers to writing that is not plot-based but rather themed-based.

In some way, this might make you think that concept fiction is a matter of genre, but this is not entirely accurate. True, most e.g. crime fiction is plot-based (whereas literary fiction isn’t), but there is an important difference.

Whereas the idea of genre fiction (or of literary fiction) informs the aesthetics and form of the narrative – that is, what it looks like – concept fiction refers to the process itself: how to write the narrative.

Of course, having a different methodology of writing directly affects the outcome – and so, to some extent, the aesthetics. This means that:

although concept fiction is applicable to any genre (or literary fiction, or experimental fiction), it does somewhat blur the established borders between genres and can destabilize its own position in the literary category.
it’s an invaluable tool of imagination and creativity.

Especially if you’re a genre writer, the first element above might sound like something bad. It isn’t, but it also depends on your priorities. We’ll get back to this later in the post. For now, a simpler way of putting it would be this: “Concept fiction helps your work stand out from the vast crowd of mediocre works”.

Much better, isn’t it?

In this post we’ll take a closer look at all these elements, and see how writing concept fiction can help you produce intelligent narratives that are cohesive, symbolically rich, and intriguingly original.

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