Second draft 
Maybe you can scrap ideas from this and make it into a shorter book!
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I don’t think it’s going to be a short standalone, maybe longer than the original because I plan on adding things to this draft.
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Maybe it can be a standalone.
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Alrighty then.
Thanks for the help either way.
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A longer standalone, it can happen.
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I am glad that it can be done. Thanks again for commenting.
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I tried that once
. . .
It really backfired
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So, you’ve tried writing a standalone, but ended up with a novel series? Is that what you’re getting at or not at all?
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I tried writing a standalone novel. It’s now an 11 book series with a spin-off series of currently 5 books 
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Geez! 
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I have the opposite problem. I don’t write series. I am more attracted to new characters, genres, settings and plots than to continuing the same story for 3 books. It really hurts me because literally writing series is in top 3 successful writing advice. On the other hand, I realize that writing series when the first book flopped is not a great idea either.
Anyway, I don’t think writing in series is a bad thing. It’s actually more of a good thing. If series write itself, go for it.
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True. I just don’t want to make it into a long ass series.
However, you are right though. If the story calls for it to be a series, so be it.
Still, I think it could possibly serve as a long standalone or a long duology maybe.
But the way I have it, it might just work solely as a standalone.
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Duology is series anyway. Stand-alones are really long in the current market, so if your story’s structure has an obvious midpoint, there is not need to split it into 2 books
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As having accidentally created multiple series, I think my lesson learned is to control the scope of the story.
If you go into it with all your cool ideas, mash them all together, then you run the risk of creating too large of a scope that you can’t fit into one book.
To write a standalone, keep the story idea simple. Don’t throw everything you’ve got into that one book. Save the other cool ideas for other projects.
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From my perspective, I have no idea how you can make a series I tend to write standalones, so.
Like…how do you, how does it…happen? I have to decide I would make my story into a series in the beginning of writing, what would be, the first book. It doesn’t just happen. I’m always thinking of a concise beginning, middle, and end for each book and it always concludes so like…how does one not write a standalone? XD
Maybe you need to be concise? The story should be contained in its own little world? Like when I came up with my lion girl story, the ending was going to be her breaking out of jail and freeing her race. To get there, the story is really character-focused and just her little story in her little corner of the world. Nothing more than that.
I’m probably no help
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Wait…I thought you wrote nothing but series. I had no idea you wrote only standalones.
That is shocking to hear! 
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Lol XD
What made you think that?
Maybe because I have many books taking place in Elgana you thought it was a series? They are complementary novels, but standalones. You CAN read them in an order, but you don’t have to for understanding any overall plot. Yes, there is overarching lore, but not plot.
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The more you know. 
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To be honest, I should have gone that route with my novels, because my world of Llyria has a fairly large amounts of lore, histories, mysteries, exotic places, and more taking up space in my ever-growing mind.
And I always seem to be unable to figure out how things work for this world.
I think the method you are using is pretty cool. Curious to know if it would work for me mainly because I have never even written a novel series and large majority of my novels start off as either a standalone or some random short story.
Maybe a standalone could/would be better due to the fact that I am unable to finish what I started.
The problem with Llyria is that it is too big and constantly expands each time I come up with something totally new.
Still, I love everything about. I just need to be a smidge more realistic.
Sorry for the rambling.
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The reason mine are all standalones is because I write character-driven stories. I think a lot of plot-driven stories tend to become series? Idk. I could be wrong
For me, I think about a character living in a certain part of Elgana, finding something or encountering something, or having a life-changing experience all which prompt them to begin some adventure. Then it turns out it all connects to the overarching lore of Elgana.
Basically, readers will get to see a bigger picture of the lore in Elgana in each story. You can read one and be like “oh, that’s interesting” because it’s just a small part of the lore. Or you can read all of them and be like “oh, I see the overarching lore now”.
I never go about writing an Elgana story because I want to touch upon some specific lore. I always go about telling the story of that particular character which turns out to touch upon the lore. Even in a tiny way.
Elgana is pretty big, too Big isn’t a problem. I see it as a gold mine XD Try taking it a character at a time. Who is this character? What are they doing? What happens to them? What do they think about it? Why these actions?
And think simply. Every character’s story has a beginning, middle, and end. The end must be able to conclude everything touched upon in the beginning and middle and not leave anything too open for speculation. Also usually follows the character arc. Like Sovanna starts out being “I’m going to be queen because I want to be” or “I need to do everything myself” and throughout her journey she learns to rely on others and also learns what it really means to be a leader.
In the end, she would have grown a little bit. Of course, she’s not perfect yet, but by the end of the story Sovanna will be on her way to becoming a great leader.
So, you follow the arc. That might be a good way to write a standalone. Tell the simple story.
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