It works like this. Girl meets boy, preferably in a quaint seaside town. Happiness. They clash. Sadness. Gradually they realize that opposites attract and fall in love. Happiness. But they cannot be together because of leukemia/difficult parents/war/Alzheimer’s/a psychotic ex. Sadness. They get together anyway. Happiness. Somebody dies. Huge sadness. But the survivors lead richer, fuller lives for having known each other. Happiness.
That algorithm has fueled Nicholas Sparks’ success for a decade-and-a-half. A business-finance major who sold pharmaceuticals before trying fiction, he knows the value of a well-defined, reliable brand.
Every romance novel he’s written — one a year since his 1996 debut, “The Notebook” — has been a New York Times best seller. “Safe Haven” currently sits at No. 1, and the film version, starring Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel, opened on Valentine’s Day.
What do women want in love stories? “Female characters that feel absolutely real,” Sparks says. “Characters that are flawed, because everyone is, yet self-aware enough to know their flaws and try to get better.”
In “Safe Haven,” Hough plays Katie, a waitress with an inscrutable past. She meets Duhamel’s Alex, a grocer. “There comes a moment when Katie must decide to stay or go, and she decides based on her fear of what will happen to someone else,” Sparks says. “Combine all that and put her in a situation where she can meet somebody. The kind of male character that when he loves, loves deeply, not just for a couple of hours.”
A 47-year-old “small-town guy,” Sparks lives with his wife and five kids in New Bern, N.C., not far from Southport, where “Safe Haven” was filmed last year. Sparks, who also produced the film, takes an active, even argumentative role. He decides who gets cast (he favors new actresses like Hough, having had good luck with Rachel McAdams) and who will direct. (He had a good experience with Lasse Hallström on their earlier collaboration, “Dear John.”)
But once shooting commences, he backs off. “You don’t tell Josh, Julianne or Lasse how to do their jobs.”