My Influence: The Last Song

            With hopes of influencing my children’s book that I am currently writing, I watched the 2010 movie The Last Song. The movie is about a teenage girl named Ronnie Miller who struggles to cope with her parent’s divorce and her recent move into her father’s house. She learns to get along with her father near the end of the movie but it is too late. Her father dies of Cancer just as she begins to get along with him. In the midst of the sad story, Ronnie Miller falls in love with a boy named Will Blakelee who comforts her through her father’s deterioration.

            The Last Song relates to my children’s book immensely. I am writing about a young girl whose mother died of cancer when she was younger. She struggles with bullying and friends, but eventually falls in love with the boy who stands up for her through it all. Both stories are extremely similar and many ideas can be taken from the movie and imported into my story as my own. One particular part of The Last Song I loved was how Ronnie always loved playing the piano and was a fantastic player until her parent’s divorce. She stopped playing when they divorced but started again when she and her father began to get along. I would like to include something like this in my story, in the sense that I want my main character to lose a part of her when her mother dies but regain that part when she regains her strength and confidence back.

            Ronnie Miller is a loving teenager and in one scene in the movie, she is startled by a raccoon going after turtle’s eggs on the beach. She barricades the eggs to save them and stays out all night just to protect them. Eventually they hatch and it is beautiful how they swim into the water. The idea of animals or pets was something that never crossed my mind at all. A pet in my story could be the best friend of my main character and could symbolize a lot. I would like to include some type of pet in my main character’s life to enhance the story a little and make it more unpredictable.

            Many great ideas arose out of watching the movie The Last Song and I’m happy my mother recommended it to me. Although the stories are very similar, there are many variations between them to separate them from each other. I would like to use a few ideas from the movie I watched but transform them into my own thoughts by changing them around a little. The relationship between Ronnie and her father showed me a lot about the love in families and taught me how to write things when implying something else at the same time. I have been greatly influenced by The Last Song and it is one more step towards my completion of my children’s book.