Know an unpleasant person? Put them in your story!

One piece of advice that seems to resonate from all successful authors is that you should write about what you know. The more you can populate your story with people and situations based on your own real-life experiences, the better. And certainly this
is very much the case with my book, Exposé. 

I have years
of experience working as part of/with the media and much of the story in Exposé involves national tabloids, TV discussion programmes, news websites, the local press and phone-in radio shows. There is much of my career spread throughout its pages and
many reporters who’ve read the book have told me they recognise much of it. 

But some of the story comes from other parts of my life, and some of the characters are based on people I’ve worked with who had nothing to do with the media.
One of the main characters in the book is Leonard Twigg, the much-feared editor of the Daily Ear newspaper. 

But although Twigg is a journalist through and through, he is actually based on a man I worked with many years ago who wasn’t a journalist.
The man (let’s call him John Smith) had many interesting and fearsome qualities and that was exactly what I was looking for in Twigg. He had a very clear and specific way of working, was very protective of his reputation and kept a firm grasp on how
things were done. There was only one way to do things, and that was John Smith’s. 

Even years later his leadership style stays with me for many different reasons, some positive and some negative. On the one hand he was passionate, knowledgeable
and extremely creative. John was very well respected within his industry and had a long list of people who wanted to work with him. But on the other he was often unpleasant and wasn’t someone you would necessarily trust with a problem. 

At
our team meetings, the tension in the room was palpable as each of us was asked to report back on our projects. His temper would flare quickly if there had been failures or evidence of sloppiness, but he was also generous with his praise. In the pub afterwards,
he would buy everyone a drink and stay for an hour or so before heading off home. We would then exchange views on how each meeting had gone and who was currently in his good books and who was in his bad books. 

I became aware that everyone in that
team, no matter how confident or experienced, was unnerved by him. One colleague found a missed call from him on her mobile phone and became quite panicked by this. Rather than call him straight back, she started phoning other colleagues to try and find out
why he may have phoned her. This sort of manic reaction was not unusual. 

I didn’t stay part of the team as long as many of the others. I found the monthly cycle of peaks and troughs in my working relationship with John Smith too
taxing and eventually decided to move on. Years later when I sat down to write Exposé, the character of Leonard Twigg was already a fully-formed character in my head. He was, essentially, John. 

Leonard, like John, is extremely well respected
and delivers a first class product through his own skill and way of working. But he is also feared by his staff and in the novel I explore the impact this has on various people within the newsroom. Much of this is based on real life incidents involving John,
and this includes the ‘missed call’ mentioned earlier. 

There are a number of characters in Exposé based on people I’ve worked with or known over the years, and I did experience a particular joy putting to paper some of
the more unpleasant ones. It can be an extremely cathartic process to examine your memories of people who’ve negatively impacted on you and your life, and then create a fictional character from those memories. I’m very pleased I worked with John
for many reasons, but giving me Leonard Twigg is definitely top of the list.