Both the ideas you have suggested are good, however i'm not too sure how to do them. The first would be a total pain to do, unless I set it up so that a user can mark it as "being worked on" - the only problem with this is that the user might never come back... I guess this could be done, but i'd need some external help.
As for the second, I might be able to do this, but i'm thinking it would be very resouce intensive......
What I am going to add is the ability for you to bookmark a chapter, allowing you to access it again from the forumhome and vbstory welcome page.
I'm also going to set it up so that admins get an email when a story is suggested, and when a new chapter is added (although I don't know how to access admins emails yet, i'll working something out.
although at this stage i'd like to point out this won't be for a couple of weeks, i've got some more important projects to work on first (after all, I need to earn a living

)