Putting life's photo album into words

British writer David Nicholls. Photo / Supplied

For most of us, turning 40 is a major milestone. For David Nicholls, the occasion provided the inspiration for his latest novel, One Day. As the title indicates, it chronicles the lives of its two main characters, Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley, by dropping in on them on the same day every year over the course of two decades.

"Inevitably you look back on your life," says Nicholls of the big day. "I wanted to write about the changes that take place between the ages of 22 and 41. How we change and how we stay the same. It's a bit like looking through a photo album. It's bittersweet, nostalgic, funny and sad. I wanted to write about two characters growing up over a period of time, but the idea of writing 20 years of someone's life is a little daunting so I just wanted to pick up on the key moments. I'm 42 now and I've got two kids. A lot has changed since I left university."

Like Dexter, Nicholls' roots are in film and television, as a scriptwriter rather than a presenter. He made his big screen debut in 1999, co-writing the screenplay for Simpatico, which was based on a Sam Shepherd play. But it was penning episodes for the third season of the popular series Cold Feet that proved to be his big break. "I was very lucky to come on board when it was really hitting its stride," he reflects. "It became a huge phenomenon. I learnt a lot on that." Since then, he has written the thriller I Saw You, which starred Fay Ripley, and a modern retelling of Much Ado About Nothing. He also scripted last year's acclaimed Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which will soon be followed by another Thomas Hardy adaptation, Far From the Madding Crowd.

When I meet him at the British Library, just down the road from his north London home, Nicholls is working on a draft for a film of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, "which I've always loved, it's always been one of my favourite books." His first novel, Starter For Ten, was published in 2003. The heart-warming tale of a young undergraduate's exploits on University Challenge, it was turned into a feature film, starring James McAvoy and Rebecca Hall, for which Nicholls wrote the script. However, he insists he hasn't approached any of his books with an eye on a possible screen option.

"All of the novels are written very much as novels," he says. "It's important to write fiction as fiction but the structures of the stories I tell and the kinds of characters I write about are influenced by movies. It's hard not to be influenced by cinema, especially if you're writing in certain genres like romantic comedies or thrillers. I love movie dialogue and that bitter-sweet tone of Woody Allen films, Billy Wilder and old 30s Hollywood movies."

One Day was a more complex undertaking than Starter for Ten or Nicholls' second novel The Understudy. "It had to be planned much more carefully," he says. "It has a wide range of characters and tones. Some chapters are fast, others are much more intimate. Some chapters are pure romantic comedy and some are not about romance at all, they're about family or fatherhood. There's much more variety in it. It needed to be plotted very carefully as a minor character in 1993 may reappear in 2001 as a major character so you have to make sure that all the pieces fit together."

The story begins with Dexter and Emma's first seemingly brief encounter in 1988. Although apparently made for one another, they keep missing chances to be together as the years progress before their lives take separate paths. "It's an old romantic comedy situation," laughs Nicholls. "Two people who belong together but through misunderstandings like a missed phone call or a letter that falls down the back of a sofa, it doesn't quite happen. I also wanted to write about friendship. "When I was in my 20s and 30s, I didn't think of my girlfriends as a series of love affairs but as friends, intense friendships. Some of them were transitory and some have lasted. Friendship is much more important in the book than family life. It's not a family saga, it's about love and friendship."

Nicholls was determined to avoid any male or female stereotypes. "There's so many cliched notions about the differences between men and women," he says. "I wanted to write a heroine who wasn't into shopping, who didn't own a lot of shoes and wasn't obsessed with boys or frustrated about being a singleton. And I wanted to write a man who wasn't football-crazy and wasn't always wanting to be with his mates down the pub. In romantic comedies, people tend to drive a huge wedge between the genders that doesn't exist in real life in quite the same way."

* One Day (Hodder & Stoughton $38.99)