Noticing Newbies

Welcome(ish)! I think you've posed an interesting question.

Some suggestions:

Maybe they think of themselves as a group, and come up with a name to refer to themselves? Like the Three Musketeers, but something else

Other ideas: the group, the band, the friends, the quartet...

Some things to keep in mind:

1. If you're referring to them as doing something as a group a lot, you might be doing more TELLing than SHOWing, so check for that.

2. If you're doing a lot of description of their movements to various places, it might not be necessary (I call this a play-by-play commentary: "Tess went to the kitchen. She grabbed a glass of water, filled it, then went to sit on the couch." Unless that water is all that important (it's not), just skip to something like "Once seated on the couch..."). Ask yourself if the moving TO a place is important or if can you just skip to being AT the place?

3. Try to read your scenes from the perspective of a reader. Can you tell who is where, who is speaking, and what they are doing? You might be over-labeling and overstating the obvious when it comes to tagging the people or the group. If it's clear that the readers understand your 4 friends are together, they don't necessarily have to be referred to by someone. I'm thinking something like "Hey, there, you four people walking through town, what are you doing?" could easily be "Hey, what are you doing" with "you" implying the entire group of people. Not sure if this is occurring in your work, of course, but just something to consider.

HTHs!

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1UppyEar

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