On Spending “One Day” (Well, Part of One, Anyway) with David Nicholls

Some days this whole writer/book blogger gig is simply too fun – and last week I had one of those days. Thanks to the fabulous connections (and reputation) of LuxuryReading.com, I was fortunate enough to spend an hour on the telephone with author David Nicholls, author of last year’s rather-big-commercial-deal love story “One Day.” The book has been developed into a film – opening August 19 at theaters near you! – screen-written by David, and the call gave ten lucky book bloggers the opportunity to discuss reading, writing, movies, and the story with the author.

Please be warned – there is some SPOILER-NESS near the end of this post. I will try to give due warning when it’s coming though…

First of all, let me say that David was lovely. Polite, courteous, generous with his time and eager to provide insight and earnest answers to all of the questions he was asked, slightly self-effacing – all of the charming stereotypically British characteristics. Characteristics he shares, by the way, with Emma Morley, the equally lovely co-protagonist of “One Day.”

For those of you who haven’t yet read the book and/or are unfamiliar with its premise, let me give you the briefest of summaries: Emma and Dexter meet on July 15, the eve of their graduation from university. They could not be more opposite in circumstance or personality; Emma is bookish and out to save the world; Dex is a dashing party boy out to save himself – from boredom and work and responsibility, mostly. The book follows Em and Dex throughout the course of their lives, checking in with them each July 15 as the years pass between 1988 and 2007. Great approach to a classic boy-meets-girl story, eh? I thought so too. And apparently, so did the folks at Focus Films, who are responsible for bringing David’s screen adaptation – starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess – to us in a few short weeks.

Anyway, now that everyone is at least somewhat on the same page, back to the interview. Each of us was allowed to ask David two questions. I thought rather long and hard about mine. I developed four that built together into a sort of mini-story, figuring I’d adapt them as needed as the call went on. If you’ve never done one, it’s surprisingly tough to do a group interview. This is largely due to two things – (a) you never know what anyone else will ask and (b) you can’t really ask follow-up questions – which make it difficult to generate a coherent sequential narrative or picture from the interviewee. It’s like getting snapshots of someone’s vacation – lots of lovely details, but you don’t always catch the overall gist of the trip. Still, everyone shares those snapshots – and I’m no different. So here are the two questions I worked in and David’s answers. Glean from them what you will… Do be warned though – my second question contains the big of spoiler-age I mentioned at the beginning, so if you haven’t read the book you may want to skip that part…

My first question had to do with the translation of a long story, heavy on introspection and sneak-peeks into characters’ heads, into a film. If you’re anything like me, you’ve seen the occasional screen adaptation that makes you go, “huh?” You know the ones, where things seem to mysteriously all fall into place and characters do things for no apparent reason – until the end of the story, when all of a sudden the reasons become perfectly obvious. Or the ones where you’ve read the book but someone you’re with has not, and you walk out of the theater claiming it was the best movie EVER and they walk out with the previously-mentioned “huh?” – because they didn’t have all the back-story or context that you gained from the book. So basically, I was asking David how he dealt with that – how an author makes sure that enough of the behind-the-scenes motivation translates onto the screen, without having to resort (hopefully) to the dreaded voiceover of a character’s thoughts.

In a nutshell he said that it was not that big a deal, because he and the film team were genuinely all on the same page in wanting to be faithful to the book. As a result, David reported that there weren’t too many major battles about what to include or how to handle it. I am not sure how common this is or if it tracks his experience in his previous novel-to-screen-adaptation work, and since we couldn’t ask follow-up questions, I guess we’ll never know… Seems to me that it would be absolutely key to be very careful in selecting the director/production company, to ensure this kind of “same page” thinking.

My second question dealt more with David’s novel-writing process. He told us from the outset that he basically wrote “One Day” knowing how it would end – the entire novel was written to support the death of Emma. So I asked him whether this was his typical writing style and whether he ever struggled during the course of writing as a result of knowing how things would end. That is, did he ever find himself knowing something had to happen to make the end ring true, yet not know how to make that something happen organically or consistently with the rest of the story.

His answer here was very interesting to me as a writer and as a reader – but mostly as a writer. David said that he has often heard novelists talk about characters “taking over” the story, but that this had never happened for him. He always knows how things will end and his characters behave accordingly. I was flabbergasted at this, because my characters nearly always take over and end up telling me their stories, rather than the other way ‘round. But I digress. David believed this was due to his origins in television writing.

Apparently, screenplay writers are instructed from day one to not even begin writing a script until they know exactly how the story will proceed, scene by scene. As a result, his novels tend to proceed apace. He did acknowledge that there were some changes made to the story as he wrote – for example, he had originally thought Dex would end up a journalist at a mid-1990s British low-end lifestyle magazine, but then as he went along he realized Dex was likely not smart or literary enough to pull that off – but overall the final book tracked pretty well with his initial story documents. David admitted that he occasionally wished he could be more spontaneous or improvisatory with his writing, and that he admired writers who could write an entire book off of one sentence, but that overall he was too nervous, structured and precise to take that approach himself.

All in all, I found David to be well-spoken and engaging, and more than willing to share a lot of insights into his writing process and into that of screenplay writing/adaptation. He is, by his own admission, more Emma than Dex – and that was perfectly all right with me, because I quite liked Emma. She tells a great story – just like David.

This is the first of several posts that will feature “One Day” and David Nicholls prior to the film opening on August 19. So stay tuned for more information on the author, my review of the book, and a slew of free stuff and contest opportunities!