If I’m motivated for Perfectly Aligned I can probably finish an episode in 8-10 hours, but the directing is simpler and the storyline is more direct; there’s not really any branching. When I was working on my contest entry the episodes were taking me like 10-20 hours-ish, so for that one I’m going to say 15-20 hours at a guess. If I get my butt in gear I can usually get an episode of PA done a week between sleep, work, sleeping due to work, etc.
Right now The Heiress only has 3 because it’s a contest entry and I’m not updating it until winners are announced. Perfectly Aligned has 11 at the moment and is still being continued.
This is a tough one. I’m going to say personally I don’t like taking over a month for updates, but that makes me a hypocrite because I haven’t updated PA since the beginning of December since I lost motivation for it/I was working on my contest entry.
I think this is something that each author has to decide for themselves. I do think, though, that if it’s been so long your readers are starting to forget what the story was even about, that might be the time limit.
Overall, though, I think a month is a decent amount of time for updates especially if a story has a lot of branching/more complex directing.