The Books

Book FAQs

What was your inspiration for The Last Song?
I hadn’t written a younger love story since A Walk to Remember and, as I was kicking around ideas for my next book, I received a phone call from Jennifer Gipgot, a producer associated with Disney (and the sister of Adam Shankman, who’d directed A Walk to Remember).  She said that Miley Cyrus loved A Walk to Remember, and that she wanted to do something in the same vein.  After meeting with Jennifer, Adam, and the Cyrus family a few weeks later, I had some ideas about writing a coming of age story where the two lead characters would be forced to spend time together, but I also wanted to include a story that adults could relate to.  And somehow, I came up with the idea of sea turtles, so I agreed to write both the screenplay and the book for The Last Song. 

Will there be a teaching series?
There are no plans at this time for a teaching series on The Last Song.

Will you write a sequel?
There are no plans at this time for a sequel.

Discussion Questions

 
1. Ronnie is a difficult teenager who is prone to acting out and is alienated from both her parents at the start of the novel. Were you rebellious as a teenager? How was this manifested? On the other side, have you ever had to deal with a rebellious teenager? Did Ronnie’s behavior touch a nerve? 
 
2. What do you think about the very different approaches to parenting taken by Ronnie’s mother and father? Do you think Ronnie’s mother is too intrusive or can you understand her relationship with Ronnie? Do you think Ronnie’s father is too absent, or can you understand why their relationship is the way it is?
 
3. Early in the novel we learn that Ronnie was a piano prodigy who performed at Carnegie Hall when she was thirteen. However, when we meet Ronnie, she hasn’t played in many years and has sworn to never play the piano again. Why does Ronnie feel this way?  Who do you think Ronnie hurts more by not playing the piano: herself or her father?  
 
4. Reflecting back on his life, Steve wonders: “Was it still possible for someone like him to experience the presence of God?”  Why does Steve ask himself this? What role does religion and belief play in this novel? How would you characterize Steve’s religious faith?
 
5. Why does Will fall for Ronnie? Can you understand the attraction from both Ronnie’s and Will’s points of view?
 
6. What do you make of Blaze? How would you characterize her relationship with Marcus? Have you ever been in a relationship that was not particularly healthy? Did you stay in the relationship? If so, why?
 
7. Ronnie and Will fall in love very quickly over the course of the summer. Have you ever had a summer romance that became something more than a fling? 
 
8. This novel is, in large part, about loyalty and trust. Which characters exhibit the most trustworthiness and which exhibit the least? How does a betrayal of trust affect various relationships within the novel?
 
9. In the middle of the novel, Will asks Ronnie how far she would go to protect a friend.  Why does Will ask Ronnie this? How far would you go to protect a friend?
 
10. How were Jonah and Ronnie affected by their parents’ divorce? What effect does divorce have on children, in your experience?
 
11. Both Will and Ronnie come from families that have certain expectations of them. How do these familial expectations shape them, and in what ways do they reject these expectations?
 
12. Why does Ronnie get angry at Will toward the end of the novel? Do you think her anger is justified?
 
13. What do you think of the choices Steve and Kim make as parents? Do you think they were right in keeping certain things secret from their children?
 
14. Ronnie makes an important choice at the end of the novel. Would you have made the same choice if you were in her position?  
 
15. In what ways does Ronnie change over the course of the novel? In what ways does she stay the same?

Inspiration

After finishing The Lucky One in June, 2008, my mind immediately began moving to my next possible story.  Again, I wanted the story and characters and events in the novel to be original, interesting and universal.  Almost always, these are the words that pop into my head in the early stages of conceptualizing a story, but as I’ve continued to write, I’ve found that it becomes more and more difficult to meet those criteria.  There are, after all, some “certainties” in my novels:  two people will fall in love, the story will be set in eastern North Carolina, and the ending will either be happy, bittersweet or tragic.  

How then is it possible to come up with something original?  A story that surprises the reader?  One that feels fresh and interesting, yet still feels as if it could happen to anyone?

Usually, after those words pop into my head, I move into a process of elimination by asking myself what I’ve done recently.  In this instance, I thought back to Dear John (characters were in their early 20s), The Choice (characters were in their late 20s, early 30s and early 40s) andThe Lucky One (characters were in their late 20s).  At the same time, the movie for Nights in Rodanthe (with characters in their 40s and 50s) had come out the previous fall.  Thus, my first step was to eliminate all those age groups.  That left characters older than 60, or younger than 20.

Which then should I choose?  Because the somewhat recent film version of The Notebook had been such a success, I was gravitating toward writing another “teen” story, especially since I hadn’t done one since A Walk to Remember.  But again, those three words (originality, interesting and universal) popped into my head, and I knew I had to make the novel as different from A Walk to Remember as possible, while still retaining all those wonderful emotional elements.  

Ironically, it was exactly at this time that I received a phone call from Jennifer Gipgot, a producer associated with Disney (and the sister of Adam Shankman, who’d directed A Walk to Remember).  She said that Miley Cyrus loved A Walk to Remember, that she wanted to do something in the same vein, and then asked whether I “happened to have a story lying around.”

“No,” I said, “but it’s funny you should call about that . . .”

I didn’t commit to the story at that time – my idea for the story hadn’t proceeded far enough by that point – but I began focusing more intently on it, and a couple of weeks later, I had most of the general outline of the story.  One element still eluded me – what was it specifically that draws the characters together? – but I spoke to Jason Reed at Disney who reiterated that they were interested in the idea of me writing the screenplay (as well as, obviously, the novel).

Still, for the next three weeks, that one element eluded me.   Essentially, it came down to this:  I wanted the characters to feel the need (or almost feel forced) to spend time together, even though they didn’t much like each other at first.   And whatever this element was, it had to (a) be at the coast of North Carolina, (b) be something that could happen to anyone, and (c) begin in June and end in August.

A couple of (unoriginal and uninteresting) ideas immediately spring to mind:  summer camp or a summer job.  I had no intentions of doing either (both are unoriginal and hence, uninteresting).  What then could it be?  A “tournament” of some sort?  (unoriginal and uninteresting).   And so it went, right down the line.  One idea after another just didn’t work the way I wanted.

Until, of course, I stumbled onto the idea of sea turtles.  Or rather, a sea turtle nest.  And, more specifically, a nest behind her house that she feels the need to guard, and a young man who volunteers at the aquarium, who’s sent out to guard the nest.

Again, it’s one of those seemingly simple ideas, but once I had it, I knew it was exactly what the story needed. 

By then, I was getting ready to head to Los Angeles for the media tour for the film, Nights in Rodanthe, and I spent time with both Jason and Jennifer, and the Cyrus family.  By then, I’d worked out all the major elements of the story, and I presented it to all of them.  Fortunately, they liked the idea, and I agreed to write the screenplay first, since they wanted to start filming in the summer of 2009.

Because the screenplay and novel were going to be similar (at least in my version, prior to director changes), it was less odd than you might think for me to write the screenplay first, but sometimes, when working with Hollywood, that’s the way it goes.

Writing Notes

I’m not even sure where to begin with this:  the screenplay or the novel.

I suppose I should start with the screenplay, since that’s where a lot of the elements were worked out.  Between tours (I had three that fall – one for the film Nights in Rodanthe, a U.S. book tour, and a European book tour), I wrote the screenplay, and I suppose most people would like to know whether writing a screenplay is harder than writing a novel.

Not a chance.  Screenplays are easy to write, once you know the rules.  The rules can be found in any screenwriting book and they provide the structure of the film.  After that, the writing is exceedingly easy, if only because you’re allowed to “tell.” In novels, you have to “show.”  Big difference there.  In a script, you write:  “Jim is still angry at his boss as he enters his apartment.”  In a novel, on the other hand, you have to write something like, “The neighbors could hear cursing him through the thin walls of their apartments, but Jim had never cared what those losers thought of him.  All he could think about was the way his boss had talked to him.  As if he were an idiot.  A moron.  An imbecile.  It took everything Jim had not to smash his fist into the man’s nose, and for a long moment, he’d actually seen himself doing it.  As he sat there listening to his piece of crap boss with his ridiculous comb-over droning on and on about deadlines and quotas, he imagined himself balling his hands into a fist and leaping across the desk; he could see his boss’s eyes widen in shock and fright, and as he delivered the blow, he could almost feel the crunch of bone as the nose began gushing blood.  Slamming his door, he needed a drink.  No, screw that.  What he needed was a bottle . . .”

Granted, that wasn’t necessarily very good, but you get the point.  Never once did I say “Jim was angry.”   Showing is ALWAYS harder than telling.  And in a screenplay, telling is all – for space reasons – that you’re really allowed to do.

I finished the first draft of the screenplay in December, and did the first rewrite later that month.  In January, once the director was hired, I did another rewrite.  Both rewrites took about a day or two – I didn’t find them difficult, and with that, my role as a screenwriter was largely concluded.

By then, of course, I’d started on the novel.  As I’d done with The Lucky One, I chose to write the story in limited third-person perspective, and though I’d done it before, it was a bit more difficult in this particular novel than it had been in The Lucky One.  A lot of things were more difficult in fact, and no character more so than Ronnie.  Ronnie, at the beginning of the novel (and film) is angry, moody and sometimes rude – and yet, I had to make her likable at exactly the same time.  No easy task there.  At the same time (and unlike the film), I knew I had to develop Steve (Ronnie’s father) on a much deeper level.  While the novel is centered around Ronnie and Will (both teenagers), I wanted to have a story in which adults could relate.  I wanted Steve to develop into his own character (not simply a supporting character, as in the film), and I wanted to bring an element of faith into the novel.   Thus, Steve needed his own journey, his own compelling back-story, so to speak, and while in the end it served to make the novel richer and more fulfilling, it was occasionally challenging on any number of levels.

Adding to the difficulties was the sheer breath and scope of the novel.   There are a multitude of characters and a multitude of events:  in the end, the novel ended up 20% longer than anything I’ve ever written before.  Still, it reads quickly, and in the end, I think it will be a novel that readers will remember for a long time after the final page is turned.