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One of the blessings of being a prolific writer is that my idea list and my book production find a happy equilibrium somewhere in the range of 3-7 books per year. If that sounds like a shit ton of books to you, you're not wrong. If that sounds like a suspiciously small number of shiny new ideas, you're also not wrong.
Therein lies the balance.
I see new book ideas everywhere. This could become a real problem, so the flipside of it is a long-standing habit of weeding out the ones I'm not 100% invested in. Also the ones that can support a whole story, plus what length of story that's likely to be.
The story-length question is a particularly important one for me. I have a hypothesis about idea size vs. book length that I've toyed with for some time, and it runs something like this: a novella centers on one character's problem, or two characters if you're pushing it. A novel can broaden the view, looking at a character's problem in the context of a societal problem. You start to see the broader world and how it interplays with the individual, but you can't expect to fix that societal problem in the span of the book. That's the work of a series, which can tackle a societal-scale problem through the lens of the MC (and MC's problems) embedded in it.
Many ideas can be expanded or contracted to a certain degree, but that requires adding more layers (to expand) or focusing in on a smaller story within a bigger concept (to contract). For example, a heist to steal a magical item might be a novella. A dual-POV Fantasy-Romance whose heist is a ploy to foil a wizard trying to burn down a village is a novel. If your MCs then discover the wizard is just a front for some shadowy government organization gathering power behind the guise of smaller villains, you've got a series on your hands.
On the other end of the spectrum, some ideas might not even support a novella without padding, either. These can be turned into novelettes, short stories, or even flash fiction. If the whole point of an idea is to capture a certain scene, character exchange, or punchline, you probably have a smaller piece of fiction.
Examples?
1. At least a chonky novel. More likely a series!
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2. A very nice-sized Fantasy-Romance novel, provided your protagonist does not march off to war against the humans, or attempt change perceptions of beauty among those who shunned them. That's a series.
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