Billygean.co.uk

Dear Nicholas Sparks,

I want to like your books. You wrote The Notebook and Nights in Rodanthe afterall, which are very good films. I’m currently reading the latter and have also read The Guardian and one whose title I can’t remember. Yes.

While it would make me want to wallow in the bath to have someone criticise my book on the Internet, it also makes me wallow in the bath that you can get published and I can’t.

Some points to note:

* I do not need to know every character’s backstory before I meet them. I don’t care if Paul had a nice house and used to enjoy playing in the sandpit. It actually has very little to do with who he is as an adult and if I wanted to read a book about children I would have bought a children’s book. Children, unless they are your own, are not interesting. Adults are.

* Therefore perhaps you would consider having childless adult protagonists if all the child does is play on their own, be told to go away when the adults want to discuss him, and create massive plot holes when the adults are both out of the house and nobody is apparently babysitting him.

* While I would much rather you SHOWED me that tom liked geography, if you have to tell me, please don’t hedge your bets. “While tom was good at all subjects, he especially enjoyed geography…” It’s okay Nicholas. I’m not going to judge tom for being bad at maths. Likewise, just say anna had a good relationship with her dad. DON’T say “while anna got on with both parents she was especially close to her dad” OR just show me ONE scene with her BEING CLOSE TO HER DAD.

As you can tell, I am far more judgmental of your writing than of your characters.

* no more fast talking lawyers with alliterative names please. Can you say cliche?

* All your men are cops who can’t control their tempers (and say things like “i sure hope youre happier here than me, kid” when potential buyers ask him why he is selling his house) and all your women are psychologists who bake and have babies.

* No more “from the moment he met her he knew…” very tedious and unrealistic. Are you psychic? Because most people aren’t.

* Things like “he only slept for four hours a night and, oddly, was never tired” irritate me. I KNOW it’s odd.

* Sentences such as “there were single men in whatever-small-town-this-one’s-set-in, but they weren’t necessarily the kind of men she wanted to be hanging around with” grates, too. Necessarily? Just say it! They’re drug addicts!

Also: please stop with the ‘he grumbled’ and ’she laughed’ and ’she asked’ (I know it’s a question, thanks), and he said sternly and she said meekly.

Thanks.

Billygean