What Do Mermaids Eat?

If your life as a regular old human being working a 9-5 job for the man is getting you down, the "Character and Plot Realism Q&A" forum on the National Novel Writing Month Web might cheer you up. This the place where writers who are frantically working away on their novels this month can ask questions of other writers and self-proclaimed "experts" for advice about how to make their own stories more realistic. Recent threads include:

• Things (other than arson) that could set fire to a house?
• What would make a god want to have a child?
• Reason for having two different eye-colors?
• If you drop something down a grate on an NYC street, how do you get it out?
• Mistakes a time-travelling Japanese American would make in feudal Japan?
• Bounty hunters - how does it work?
• Is this band name too emo?
• What do you do with a dead dog?
• Private detective's choice in cigarettes?
• What do mermaids eat?