The Scooby Doo Problem

The trouble with writing mystery/suspense-ish stories where the main characters are teenagers is that you very quickly run into questions like, why aren't the police involved? And what kind of bad guys are so completely incompetent that they can be foiled by meddling kids?

It's not a problem of age, strictly speaking -- it's a problem of not being a part of the power structure, not having any authority to arrest anyone or interrogate anyone or get a warrant to search anywhere. But it's a problem of age, too, because it's harder to command respect even outside of the power structures, and harder to go unnoticed in a lot of places, and you've had less time to get competent at various things.

You can solve this by having relatively small and toothless mysteries, but then it's hard to make them compelling.

I think Josh Berk's mysteries handled this quite well by giving the main characters small yet emotionally important mysteries to solve while the murder stuff mostly falls to the police to handle. But it's not a solution that works everywhere.

On the other hand, there are also situations where it can be advantageous to be underestimated, and not taken seriously...

(no subject)

I signed up for NaNoWriMo! (as owlectomy.)

I am not actually attempting to get to 50,000 words. I just don't have that kind of time anymore, and don't write that fast. And I reserve the right to get bored, decide I hate the darn thing, completely change my plot midstream, or get revisions back from my editor that require my full attention.

Also, the first weekend of November, instead of writing I'm going to be spending time with my family and watching my sister run her second marathon! SO. That will be interesting.