Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Carolyn. I appreciate your insight on referring to the characters; it helps me analyze how the parts of the story function. I see how using just pronouns to identify the characters means you get more words to describe action and context. In the some where I gave descriptions of the characters, it seems like their role (like "gun enthusiast" in #3) and descriptive adjective (like "despondent") had to do double duty. They had to function to help contextualize the action (providing information that made the actions meaningful) in addition to identifying the character. Wow, this is interesting to think about! Thank you so much!