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It's common in stories for spectacle to build over time. Each story arc, the stakes get higher, the drama gets more intense, the villains get more dangerous, and so on. For a story with a fixed e...
#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/39319 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
It's common in stories for spectacle to build over time. Each story arc, the stakes get higher, the drama gets more intense, the villains get more dangerous, and so on. For a story with a fixed endpoint, that's fine. So long I know where I'm going, it's just a matter of pacing the spectacle increase. But for an ongoing story, that poses a challenge, particularly in a genre where the stakes start high. The superhero saves the city, then the world, then the universe, then the multiverse, then defeats every villain from every universe simultaneously while blindfolded and in a full body cast, and then what? How can I lower the stakes from there (or ideally, much earlier) without the audience getting bored? How can I tell an ongoing story without falling victim to spectacle creep?