Still watching the thresholds to keep the story from getting unmanageably large, but I think there's some clear favorite branches emerging and I don't want to cap any of them with branch lengths yet. Also still trying to keep different branches from ending up too similar to one another (we don't want Porkum to knock Sue up in every single branch, that would just be excessive). Might start doing more time skips at some point to further break up branches that are too similar.
I'm debating moving from a strict "every 5 likes" threshold to a floating threshold level where the minimum rises when there are a lot of chapters-to-be-written in the queue. So, like, if there are over 100 green chapters in the queue the lower bound to get a new chapter is 10 likes, second chapter 15 likes, and so on. You wouldn't see much difference in terms of overall pacing for a while.
I shouldn't start another story while I have this one going, but the urge is strong to do something linear, lighthearted, and deliberately sparse.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with a side project! IMO it could allow you to write your main story even better, since you aren’t bogged down by other ideas scratching at your brain. If you’re worried about prioritizing one over the other, just view the simpler one as ‘warm-up’ before you write your ‘main’ story!
Decided to go ahead and do it. Going to be self-contained, linear, no set update schedule, not driven by likes. I'll do a chapter when I feel like it/when there's a break in DOOMED's schedule.
Some relatively popular chapters lately; I know things can get a bit slow, but glad folks like the direction some of the branches are headed in. Trying not to repeat myself too much on parallel branches.
Somebody asked why the 20-chapter limit to corrupt Sue Storm, why drag it out, and...that's kind of the point. If Sue Storm just caves immediately within a chapter, that's boring to me. I want there to be a struggle, I want her to resist, have minor victories and a series of small defeats. Her doom may be inevitable, but it's the how and why which is fun, as well as the possibility that maybe things don't go as planned, that she's more resourceful than the villains give her cred it for. There needs to be some sort of genuine conflict to the whole story, or there really isn't much of a story.
Debating about adjusting the pacing a bit. There's no rush, since I don't have a chapter length end goal like Lois Lane's Night Out (yet). How do folks feel about progress so far?
I think I'm going to change the threshold to 10 (i.e. 10 likes on a chapter gets a sequel, 20 likes gets a second chapter, etc.) This will not make any appreciable difference to the immediate experience, since I'm still working my way through chapters with 18-23 likes on average at the moment, but it will cut down the number of chapters to be written so that we get to some chapters faster. It will mean fewer branches overall, but I can live with that.
Finished recalculating the chapters-to-be-written after the change in threshold, and we're down to 220 active branches and 315 chapters to be written in total. Which is a lot more manageable.
