Nicholas Sparks: Gag me with a spoon.

When I was in college a female friend of mine overheard me bad-mouthing Nicholas Sparks (I probably wasn't really "bad-mouthing" him at the time, because I didn't know anything except that he wrote the book that A Walk to Remember was based on, which I'd watched and thought was cheesy). This friend loaned me the book and told me not to judge until I'd read his amazing work. I read the book in an hour or two... and thought it was cheesier than the movie.

Since then I've seen one other movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book (and I didn't realize it was based on his book until afterward). It was Nights in Rodanthe. It was worse than A Walk to Remember. I've also seen probably most of The Notebook (in bits and pieces here and there... never more than a half-hour chunk of it at once). As far as I can tell, it's pretty much the same.

But apparently, in a recent interview, Nicholas Sparks criticized such authors as Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen, and William Shakespeare because they write predictable romances that are all basically the same story over and over again. He writes "love stories," not romances.

THIS is a very, very funny article that puts multiple Nicholas Sparks books/movies side by side and compares their story lines. They're all pretty much identical. It's hilarious, and I encourage you to spend a few minutes and read it.

As a teaser, check out the image below, describing the complex steps of putting together a Nicholas Sparks screenplay.