![]() Occasionally one of the central couple will die, just to keep you on your toes, but more often it's a family member. Kill your darlingsĪfter someone dies at the end - and at least one person always does - the film's survivors will learn a bittersweet lesson about life and love and emerge with a sense of quietly tragic happiness. Related articlesĪ scene from the film Safe Haven. At least one will have a tragedy in their past, like a dead spouse or an undeserved prison sentence or a family illness ( Safe Haven, The Best Of Me, The Last Song). But something stands in the way of the spark of attraction between them. He will be stoic, a man of few words who has a capacity for violence that he keeps leashed. She will be gorgeous, but humble, and unlucky in love. At some point in the last 80 years or so, our straight, white heroes meet in a beautiful town on the eastern North Carolina coast. Find the characters, then let love tear them apart Whatever stands in their way, no one will curse at any point. If all else fails, it will emerge that one of our central couple is rich and has a snooty family who disapproves of the other's humble background: this trope crops up in The Notebook, Dear John, The Best Of Me, The Last Song, A Walk To Remember and The Lucky One. In Nights In Rodanthe, it's the hero's immediate need to go reconnect with his son in South America. In Dear John, it's 9/11 and the hero's determination to go fight in Afghanistan. The tough part, says Sparks, is to find "the primary conflict" that will keep his characters apart despite their instant attraction and evident compatibility. Maybe it's just that I wasn't wealthy growing up, but when I ask people to take money they've earned working and support my career, I want to give them their money's worth." I don't want to disappoint them if they bought my book on good faith, expecting one thing, only to discover I delivered something entirely different. ![]() "But the last thing I want to do is a novel that not a lot of people may read, because it's not what they expect. "I could, theoretically, do a novel set in the 1800s," he told GQ. Hemingway did it with A Farewell To Arms."Īll that said, Sparks believes in adhering closely to his formula. They went from (Greek tragedies), to Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet, then Jane Austen did it, put a new human twist on it. They were set out 2000 years ago by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. "I write in a genre that was not defined by me. And the author sees himself as part of a grand tradition. He's managed roughly one book a year since 1996. Sparks writes 2000 words a day, three or four days a week, for four or five months at a time on each of his novels. Image from the film The Lucky One, starring Taylor Schilling and Zac Efron. Given Sparks has published 17 novels to date, there are still another six to adapt, so we're set until at least 2022 even if he never writes another word. Another - The Choice - is scheduled for 2016. After two films in 2010 - Dear John and The Last Song - there has been one movie a year since 2012, in The Lucky One, Safe Haven, The Best Of Me and now The Longest Ride, at cinemas now. 2008's Nights In Rodanthe skewed a little old, but the more recent efforts and their younger casts have hit a steady rhythm. It took a while for the cult appeal of The Notebook to become clear, but since then we've had a steady stream of Sparks adaptations. But the one that really showed how big these films could be was The Notebook, making teens swoon since 2004 (Gena Rowlands and James Garner both die). That was followed by A Walk To Remember in 2002, where Shane West's bad boy falls for Mandy Moore's cancer-stricken teen (she dies). The first Sparks adaptation was Message In A Bottle in 1999, with Kevin Costner and Robin Wright as the couple united when her journalist finds his letters in a bottle to his dead wife (he dies at the end). He has sold a reported 97 million books worldwide, and the films based on those books have so far have grossed not far short of $1 billion. Nicholas Sparks is more than just a best-selling author of sappy romantic fiction he's a one-man pop culture phenomenon. Want to write a string of best-sellers and spark endless romantic box-office hits? Helen O’Hara talks to the master, Nicholas Sparks.
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