Talk:Nicholas Sparks

Sister
I changed the dates for his sister Danielle. It said she was deceased, then listed her dates as 1943-present, which doesn't really work out. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.11.240.45 (talk) 19:26, January 6, 2007

Disambiguation
The previous name was, ridiculously, DAN BROWN, possibly vandalised? i changed it back to People with the same name as nicholas sparks -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.9.1 (talk) 23:48, March 5, 2007

Trivia & Wikipedia standards
I removed The Maine emo-rock band Sparks the Rescue used the name of his book The Rescue and Nicholas's last name to make the band's name. considering it has nothing to do with his writing, which is the section it was listed under. This is trivia. If anyone feels so inclined to find more of it, by all means, make a heading and go for it. Until then, it shall remain here in wait. I did, however, find a reference for it... just in case.

Past that, there is too much unreferenced information in this article. And too much of that unreferenced information goes against the first of Wikipedia's Five Pillars, which states "Wikipedia is not the place to insert personal opinions, experiences, or arguments". If you can't cite a reliable source, it doesn't belong in the article. -- Lara Love Talk / Contribs  04:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Dubious of category "Roman Catholic writers"
An anon just added "Category:Roman Catholic writers" - Really? I don't see that in the article and had some impression he no longer considered himself Catholic. I am not removing it as I simply don't know but... dubious.- sinneed (talk) 18:45, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I have always seen him listed as being Catholic. I don't follow his writing closely, I only just looked him up because I watched a movie based on one of his books and wanted to find something out about him, but I have often seen him mentioned as a Catholic author in Catholic publications. Here's a link to a recent interview I just found by google searching that implies that he is still Catholic (although he himself does not directly state it, the interviewer does in her introduction and he talks about "his faith" and about giving to money to the University of Notre Dame. --D.E. Aurelius (talk) 08:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The author is a very religious Roman Catholic. I am editing this article to reflect his views and the affect his faith has on his writing. I will also be adding back the Roman Catholic categories. Note: I will be adding more quotes this weekend regarding the author's faith and the influence it has on his writing. CreativeSoul7981 (talk) 04:16, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Genre-Christianity?
what genre of books is Christianity?Veritas Omnia Vincit (talk) 13:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * See Christian novel and Christian literature. Though neither of the articles are well sourced, they do contain definitions. Hope it helps. Liquidluck (talk) 21:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Judging by the movies I see a lot of premarital fornication going on in his stories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.2.92.7 (talk) 20:56, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Personal info on wife and minor children
When this information is covered in generally wp:reliable sources, it may be appropriate to include under wp:BLP. Until then it seems inappropriate. Unless there is wp:consensus here, I expect to continue to remove the names of the wife and children unless sourced appropriately.- Sinneed  21:21, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Links in introduction
Currently, the titles of his novels that have been made into films all link to the film, rather than his novels... In my opinion, it would be more fitting if they linked to his novels rather than the films of the same name. Anyone else have an opinion on this? If no one does, I'll reroute the links to the novels in a few days. --Canned Soul (talk) 01:59, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, I am now changing the links. I'll leave these posts as a notice for what I've changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Canned Soul (talk • contribs) 02:34, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Some novels/books linked to wrong page. I changed them. Some now point to an empty page, which is correct, because for some books there is no page yet. 83.78.69.4 (talk) 19:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Cormac McCarthy
Should his comments in USA Today on his being a better writer than Cormac McCarthy be listed here? They're all the rage on the internet now. He also discusses his place in literature and compares his work to the Greek tragedies. Aaron Bowen (talk) 14:23, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * wp:NOTNEWS, wp:UNDUE, and wp:trivia all seem to apply, so no, IMO. But I am not throwing it out, someone else can do it. :)-  Sinneed  22:02, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Having just placed the UNDUE tag in the article before reading the talk page, I will also state that I dont think its worthy, particularly of being called out by a separete section. Active Banana (talk) 22:11, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It was much worse before.- Sinneed  22:54, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Dropped the section head. No explanation of why this is not covered by wp:NOTNEWS, wp:TRIVIA. Probably drop the whole bit soon unless someone objects that it belongs.-  Sinneed  20:32, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No objection, dropped.- Sinneed  15:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

dont you want to make a new type of storyline?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.208.114.24 (talk) 08:34, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Image
Does anyone know why the Nicholas Sparks image was removed? I did not add the image, but I was wondering if it violated any copyrights? CreativeSoul7981 (talk) 17:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

gross WP:PROMOTION violations
I see this article as being half Wikipedia Notable (wrote some books which were made into films). But about half the article falls into the bad areas of BLPSOURCES and BLPSPS.

As I suspect the subject of the article watches this page closely, I'm giving some notice before eviscerating the page to not recapitulate his personal promotional website because:


 * "However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other. This includes the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself or about projects close to you. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical sources is unacceptable." wp:soap

Full disclosure: I'd not heard of the subject of the article and have no impression of him or his works. I did read a reference and came here to see what was known. As a reader, I had to wade through far too much irrelevancies to get to the concise information that I've come to rely on Wikipedia for.

Fydfyd (talk) 16:54, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Pirates?
The lead says that one of the themes of his books is pirates. Which one of the books is about pirates because none of the pages for any of his books mentions anything about pirates. 108.54.255.224 (talk) 20:29, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

films, and changes
All the article mentions about his films, is that it lists them. More then once. It doesn't give any sense of how well the films are received, how well they do at the box-office, the most popular film, the one that did best at the box office, the one that won the most awards---nothing. There is just a list. Which not only isn't enough, but implies a picture that may not be true. There's no context, so with the information that is there, it implies that this author writes books that turn into movies well and are clearly a success because a lot of them are being made. And the reader has no idea if that's true or not, and the article doesn't outright say it, but it implies it strongly.

In fact, Nicholas Spark's films have all pretty negatively reviewed and in most, if not all cases, the plot and characters are a major part of that. Often they are reviewed worse than the performances. We're talking about an author who has a track record of having books made into movies that are not well reviewed; that has a pattern of reviews that say "even great performances/even great actors couldn't save this plot/these characters". That might be something important to at least note on an article about an author. Maybe also something about how the movies tend to perform at the box office. A list isn't enough, and there is a lot more information that could be included in this article. Also, the complete list of books adapted to film cannot be in the article twice. "Seven have been adapted to film, including...." That sentence should not have had all seven films in that list. Including doesn't mean ALL, it means, here are a few examples. Besides, it sorta makes the section where the books that have been adapted to films are listed irrelevant. I cut the list down, so it now reads:

"'Seven have been adapted to film, including Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, and most recently The Lucky One.'"

I'd always keep the most recent film adaptation at the end of that list. If people want to debate which others should be listed and how many, go for it. Also, there was a film adaption listed that didn't exist, so I nixed that in the list section. And I added cite tags to the films which haven't been made yet. They at least need a citation, and probably don't belong on the list at all. Just because a book's been optioned doesn't really mean that it belongs in a list of films. 76.90.3.181 (talk) 07:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Shout-Out Removed
Removed the following: "He is thankful to Theresa Park from Sanford Greenburger Associates and Jamie Raab from Warner Books for helping him along." Author's acknowledgments belong in books, not on Wikipedia.Ctnelsen (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:58, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Add to the philanthropy section?
I feel this may be worthy of adding to the article: https://www.thedailybeast.com/author-nicholas-sparks-tried-to-ban-lgbt-club-student-protests-at-his-christian-school-emails-reveal

Details his involvement in his school and the controversy (?) surrounding his handling of said school's LGBT issues. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.7.183.87 (talk) 15:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * WP:RSPSOURCES says the Daily Beast is an acceptable source but "advise[s] caution when using this source for controversial statements of fact related to living persons". The LA Times saw fit to republish the story but also noted that Sparks responded in a statement that the claims were false. The lawsuit was filed in 2014, and the Daily Beast said "the case is scheduled for a six-day trial in August" [2019]. Before doing anything else it would be good to know the result of the trial (or non-result if it was settled privately out of court) but based on WP:BLP I would be cautious and not include any of it. -- 109.79.171.9 (talk) 20:03, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Found a source: Sparks won the case. It should be clear now that it would be entirely inappropriate to add it. -- 109.79.171.9 (talk) 20:11, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Table section needs prose
I was going to tag the article with the template Table section needs prose but I was afraid that if I just tagged it that some editors might not understand why it was necessary. I'm going to explain why I think the tables need explanatory prose, but a note about the table:


 * 1) The Film table includes a whole lot of Rotten Tomatoes scores and an average of those scores. What is the purpose of these scores? What is the purpose of averaging Rotten Tomatoes scores?
 * 2) The table also includes budget and box office gross figures. Again what is the intention of this table, what are editors trying to tell readers with this information.

It is more than a little strange to try and take averages of Rotten Tomatoes scores and use the resulting number to try and draw any conclusions. Editors from the Film Project have previously advised against including these kinds of averages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(film_series)/Archive_2#Average_row Based on that past discussion I would remove the averages entirely. Also since no sources whatsoever were provided for any of these Rotten Tomatoes scores, and no sources were provided for any of the budget and box office figures either, I would suggest removing them or getting them properly sourced soon.

What I think someone might have been trying to say by adding all that to the table is that Nicholas Sparks films (to put it politely): Instead of trying to lead readers to this conclusion it would be better if the text the article just came out and said it, and if people think there needs to be sources surely there must be plenty of reviews for his films that have expressed this sentiment already. -- 109.78.193.104 (talk) 07:00, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) get generally negative reviews from critics,
 * 2) and are generally very profitable.
 * I have removed the average of the Rotten Tomatoes scores, they aren't meaningful.
 * There might be reason to discuss further before removing the budget total, but again a small amount of prose could better express whatever may have been intended by listing these averages/totals in the table. -- 109.76.154.21 (talk) 02:22, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I added sources and prose to this section. I think the new chart addresses much of what is being discussed here.Mennowiki (talk) 11 February 2023 (UTC)