When you read Chekhov, everything has an even gray tone. When you read 'Family Life', everything has an even white tone. It is almost like when you paint on paper, and you can see the paper through the paint.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white.
Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.
But with writers, there's nothing wrong with melancholy. It's an important color in writing.
What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.
In a culture defined by shades of gray, I think the absolute black and white choices in dark young adult novels are incredibly satisfying for readers.
I went to a Chekhov play with my grandmother, and at the end, I was talking about how the first act was so boring. And my grandmother didn't see that at all. I realized it was because I need, like, the constant images changing. I wrote a paper about this.
'Family Life' is a blueprint of my life. It was horrible and physically gruesome in a way the book doesn't attempt to capture. It was emotionally very bleak.
I think the father-son love story is a universal one which transcends color.
That's why for Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society the colors are black and white. There are no gray issues. Life is black and it's white. There's no in-between.
There's so much grey to every story - nothing is so black and white.