A few more chapters and a lot more thinking

I've been watching what I consider to be my rivals for audience. Yeah, I know I'm the little guy off the to side, but I'm researching the market for paranormal teen/twenty-somethings drama. Vampire Diaries, Supernatural (to a lesser extent), Twilight, and True Blood are all somewhat what I'm going for. Granted, I'm not doing anything with vampires, but the powers, drama, romance, and some otherworldy elements are all there, which makes Buffy the Vampire Slayer probably closest to what I'm doing.

This makes me really struggle with a balance between broodiness, drama, romance, and action. I don't want to bore the male readers, which I'm trying to entice with a more male-oriented less pussified version of Twilight drama, but I need enough drama to make it seem somewhat realistic, seeing how the main character is essentially a regular guy that I grew up with.

The plot is progressing, but I think there's always a sort of sexual tension and excitement that disappears as soon as everything is revealed. Case and Point: Smallville. While interesting still, I think it lost a lot of its appeal after all of Clark's powers were revealed. The only way they keep it fresh is by introducing a new enemy or a new girl that looks good in a sweater for him to save. The newness fades all too quickly if you're not careful.

Finally, I'm torn on whether or not I want the story or the book to end up in Sera's world. Inkheart, a popular young adult fantasy book, spawned 2 sequels. The first was pretty interesting, but all the action happened in our world for the 1st book. The 2nd two books all happened in the Inkworld, which was cool to see, better in some ways than the original, but also a bit different flavor from the first, which I liked quite a lot. So, do I do it all in a long 1-shot tome, or split it into a couple volumes of obviously different flavors? I can already imagine a cool point as a cliffhanger ending, but do I seize it when I could just plow through and do the whole story arc in a massive novel? It's a hard choice.

I'll dwell on it a bit more as the story progresses. I'm at 114k words now and counting. If I go too far it will physically necessitate a second volume, if only to call it Part II.