When My Heroine Goes Undercover as a Teenager, How Can She Realistically Do So?

[Noitard]

I’m working on a novel about a character named Alice, who decides to go undercover as a high school student, for an extended period of time.  Is she rich, or is she poor? That influences her choices, like if she needs to pawn personal belongings. Does a friend help pay for all this?   Storywise, pawning belongings is something I like, but if it ain’t warranted, it ain’t warranted.  

 

Beyond that, Alice pointedly wishes to avoid ID theft, or fiscal fraud.  Alice certainly doesn’t wanna steal someone else’s identity--she wants to create her own, and while she may be running from her past, none is actually chasing her, and she up to this point, been utterly law-abiding, so her choosing her own name is more warranted, than if security issues were primary.  If she is breaking the law by doing this, then her crime is really victimless, or at least she thinks it is.
 

Also, can Alice fake a her driver’s licence, social security #, and DOB without breaking the law?  This matters.

[Apache Raccoon]

45 minutes ago, Noitard said:

can Alice fake a her driver’s licence, social security #, and DOB without breaking the law?  This matters.

I think faking her drivers license and social security would count as fraud and be illegal.

I think she might get away with pretending she's younger.

[Elfy]

It's your story, it's your job to answer the questions you pose.

The phrase you are looking for is "suspension of disbelief" and you might find that your readers are perfectly willing to suspend disbelief if the story is well-written. Probably my most popular story at the moment involves an eighteen-year-old woman who is incredibly small getting abducted from an ophanage and then kept as a baby. I have a story where the protagonist is gradually turned into a rabbit! If you write something well readers will happily accept the rules you create for your world. You are almost never going to write an interesting ABDL story without diverging from reality, rather than asking if things are realistic you should think about how to write your ideas in a way that make readers suspend their disbelief.

It's best not to overthink these things and get bogged down in details readers aren't going to care about too much. If you spend too much time on these things you'll never actually write anything!

[Noitard]

On 4/10/2020 at 2:29 PM, Apache Raccoon said:

I think faking her drivers license and social security would count as fraud and be illegal.

I think she might get away with pretending she's younger.

Okay, but could she legally change her name?  Also, I take it's alright to put whatever name you want on your credit cards, as long as you pay the companies back?

On 4/10/2020 at 7:11 PM, Elfy said:

It's your story, it's your job to answer the questions you pose.

The phrase you are looking for is "suspension of disbelief" and you might find that your readers are perfectly willing to suspend disbelief if the story is well-written. Probably my most popular story at the moment involves an eighteen-year-old woman who is incredibly small getting abducted from an ophanage and then kept as a baby. I have a story where the protagonist is gradually turned into a rabbit! If you write something well readers will happily accept the rules you create for your world. You are almost never going to write an interesting ABDL story without diverging from reality, rather than asking if things are realistic you should think about how to write your ideas in a way that make readers suspend their disbelief.

It's best not to overthink these things and get bogged down in details readers aren't going to care about too much. If you spend too much time on these things you'll never actually write anything!

Fair enough--fair enough.