"How is the subject?" Dr Roberts asked.

I worked for a large school just off the coast off the Atlantic. It was a prestigious school and man was it the largest around. I could spend a good hour walking around it before I visited all the rooms. I am the janitor; unfortunately, my family did not have the funds to send me to such a school. I wish they did.

He was a strange customer to say the least. The day was off to a great start. I had finished working on a long term client’s car, which recently has been having engine trouble. It wasn't hard to find the problem, but to fix it was a delicate matter. However, I did my job and relaxed after an arduous task. Working for the officers is never appreciated, not by my fellow man and not even by the officers. I was just happy to have him gone and hopefully my workmanship would keep him away for a long while. That's when the stranger walked into my garage.

Dark Water was by far the most terrible tourist spot in the city. We had festivals, carnivals, monuments and oversized furniture, but the lake was an eyesore. Of course, we were stuck with attractions that we gradually downplayed over the years until they stopped appearing on the brochure. This attraction was known as Lake Robinson, but locally it was known as Dark Water Lake. It was something the adults ignored and the children whispered about.

The motion was sickening, but after such a long time you get over it. The rowboat slowly drifted in a direction that we didn't know. It was depressingly slow, but we had little choice. We used to argue whether we were going North or South. It was a confusing and pointless argument. Losing the oars to a storm and forced to see the same flat blue ocean drives even the angriest people to silence.

Dialogue requires a different mindset. You need to place yourself in your character’s shoes, react the way they would and still play the writer and steer the conversation in the direction you want. Thus, dialogue can be pretty difficult to write if it doesn’t come naturally.

The Midas Code by Boyd Morrison is an action-adventure story, where Tyler Locke, an army engineer, must work together with a classics scholar, Stacy Benedict, to find the legendary treasure of King Midas. It is an adventure filled with ingenious thinking, plenty of fights and deadly villains.

The first chapter is all about introductions. You introduce your characters, your theme and more. Yet, you also introduce yourself as a writer. You show the reader how you will tell the story. The style in which you give details and the atmosphere of your story. Making a good impression becomes the main stress in your first chapter, as you don’t want to make a mistake in your story or your style.

‘Slade House’ by David Mitchell is a dark fiction written as a companion to his book ‘The Bone Clocks’. I should say that when I was given this book to read, I had no idea that it was a companion book, but upon doing further research, I learned it is written in very much the same style and can be read as a standalone novel. Yet, I recommend before reading Slade House, you should read ‘The Bone Clocks’, to get more out of this book.

Characters will have their unique personalities, but certainly similar traits. The same sense of humour, the same sense of right and wrong, the same positive or negative outlook on life. With that said, there are some more defined traits we can give characters to make them more likeable, from a sarcastic sense of humour to a sincere sense of justice.