I like to go far, or at least have the next twelve months mapped out. With some more stagnant characters like Cable, I'll grab hold of a canon gap of several years with both hands just to give him a reason to be nice and simple and live a relatively normal life (which, honestly, for as little as I play Cable, the thought of his home life makes me happy. /dork).

Meanwhile with Ender I have to think literally centuries into the future, because he has a LOT of crazy canon ahead of him, and that needs to work in a way that doesn't make me want to garb OSC and shake him until he stops breaking his broken characters more without admitting they're well and truly broken.

And with other characters, like Arthur and Mitchell, I just go 'these key canon points are going to be happening in the near future. We'll see how it goes.'