David Nicholls: ‘I’m genuinely deathly at a dinner party’

David Nicholls, 57, is a screenwriter and author whose six novels include Us, longlisted for the Booker prize in 2014, and the multimillion bestseller One Day (2009). His latest novel, You Are Here, is currently on the shortlist of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, the winner of which is announced on 2 December. The story of a divorced copy editor who meets a depressed geography teacher while on a hike across the north of England, it’s been praised by the New York Times as “an affectingly hard-won romance… sharp-tongued and irresistible, the most intelligent treat”.

How did this book come together?
I was going to write a big London novel, then lockdown happened and suddenly I didn’t know what a London novel would look like. Everyone was at home, anxious and distracted. I guess that planted the seed. I was aware of how much I missed the countryside, even though I’m a Londoner who’s never really lived in the countryside. I was aware how difficult it was for friends living alone, and I was aware how difficult communication was becoming. After lockdown, I found myself tongue-tied and awkward. So those were the strands: I wanted to dig into my craving for the countryside, I wanted to write about the benefits and demands of conversation, and I wanted to write about loneliness.

Not to mention the enduring psychological impact of random street violence…
That, again, seemed a tough subject to include in what is essentially a romantic comedy. I love London and I fight against its portrayal as somehow a place of no-go zones and constant threat – it really isn’t that. At the same time I’m aware of how a moment on the tube – a look, a remark – can flare up into something that can change the course of a life. It’s something I feel all the time in the city.

Let’s make clear you’re up for a comic fiction award here.
I know [laughs]. I’ve tried to write six comic novels now and this is the first time I’ve been nominated. There’s no contradiction between writing a comedy and writing something that’s about melancholy or depression or alcoholism. I guess this is just the first one where I’ve really tried very precisely on a line by line basis to make it funny.

What’s involved in that?
Chiselling away at the sentences and dialogue until they take it off me. I’d always love to do another draft post-publication. I don’t open the document that will be the novel until quite late; for a year I just scribble jokes and observations and character sketches and ideas for scenes in a big sketchbook. The first draft is always straining too much to be funny, a bit like someone trying too hard at a party.

What about the business of plotting?
I did struggle with getting to an ending. The original ending never worked because [one character] had to forgive so much in such a short period of time – it felt degrading. My books are often about fundamentally decent people making mistakes for perfectly understandable reasons. Dealing with the question of how you forgive people when they hurt you became a question of what I needed to do to not leave the reader feeling a character had done something so implausible that they’re going to throw the book across the room.

Which character came first?
Marnie [the copy editor]. It was initially a novel about cinema-going: two people who meet at matinees then start going together, rather than independently; a love story told in films. Parallel to this, I had another idea – a family on a walking holiday –so I just transposed the movie-going characters into that landscape because it seemed an interesting mismatch to do a classic urban romcom in a field in the rain. I’d love to go back and try to write about film, but Jeremy Cooper’s wonderful novel Brian made me doubt my ability to write so well about cinema. It’s a book about films as a partial antidote to loneliness; he’s done it so beautifully, I don’t think I can do it now.

You’ve spoken previously about the influence of Thomas Hardy, whose Tess of the D’Urbervilles you adapted for TV. Do you still read him?
Not for years. The terrible truth is that when you adapt a book, it kind of kills that book as soon as you finish working on it. If I were to come to Hardy now, having never read any, I’m not sure how much I’d like him. At 16, I probably was a lot more forgiving of Angel Clare.

Which other writers inspired you growing up?
Sue Townsend was massive: I remember reading Adrian Mole and thinking, I wonder if I can do this? I was one of those kids who lived for TV comedy. Monty Python, Not the Nine O’Clock News, The Young Ones – all that was thrilling. Victoria Wood was someone I just revered. The first attempts I made at what you might call writing – I didn’t think of it as that – were dabbling in comedy at university, but I thought of it more as being an actor. I did try hard to be funny, and I’m not! I’m genuinely deathly at a dinner party: I can’t tell a joke, I can’t tell stories particularly well. So I guess I welcome the fact that [as a writer] you can just sit by yourself and make everything just so.

What are you reading right now?
I’m really enjoying the Sally Rooney [Intermezzo]. She’s very humane, very smart and honest about love – a fantastic analyst of emotions. That close attention to characters in their lives, that’s what I admire.

What book did you last give as a gift?
Alan Hollinghurst’s Our Evenings, which I also admired very much. The feeling of having a book pressed in your hands is wonderful, but I’m starting to worry I’ll never get to the bottom of the pile I want to read. It’s a source of some guilt and anxiety for me.

• You Are Here by David Nicholls is published by Sceptre (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply