Young people novels are often only about 40,000 words long. Think Goosebumps or the others aimed at the same age group.

Check your description, check for passages of telling verses showing, add to the dialog(as in adding some action instead of talking heads)---add a sub plot if you don't have one. Tell the story with the word length in mind.

I do 2,500(about) per chapter and always keep in mind how many chapters I will have. More recently with the last book I made a bare bones outline. Just the idea of each chapter. It helped a alot. Also have some crits done and listen to the readers coments on things like--I wish you would tell us more about----?

Good luck. My problem has been getting things down to 70,000 words. And I used to think I couldn't write short but with work have discovered that I can.

Oh and 70,000 words is about 300 pages with double spacing, 1.5 inch margins and using times new roman 12pt font.

Shawn

sorry, I'm wayyy into details.

And---While writing my last novel, 75,000 words in four months, I also wrote 4 columns at 3,000 words each, a serial story at 3,000 words each section (four of them), put out three newsletters and worked on a non-fiction book I am doing---about 50,000 words per month. I also teach in the middle school as a sub but work almost full time between the three schools I sub at.

Ann Rice writes several books a year and hers all fall into the 100,000 plus word range.

Oh, you meant like fear street, not goosebumps...