: Re: How much indirection is too much? I'm writing a chapter with a lot of indirection, and I'm wondering if I'm doing too much of it. To be specific, it is the main character remembering an event

@BetL639

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Try it as dialog... and then you'll also realize the situation could be seen as very prejudiced (code smell?) Let me show you:

Groff: I'm leaving before those Grobschookas get here.

Doff: Why? I mean, they seem a bit violent, but who isn't?

Groff: You don't get it, they are horrible.

Doff: In what way?

Groff: They eat babies.

Doff: Really? Come on?

Groff: I'm telling you! When I was young, a merchant told me stories
about some settlers he met whose babies the
Grobschookas ate!

Doff: You met a merchant who met some settlers who met the Grobschookas? Yeah, good luck with that... I'm going to check them out
anyway...

The big loser might be Doff in the end, but still... This is the risk with the everlasting I-heard-someone-who-heard-someone-who-said-someone-was-this-or-that... You risk sounding very prejudiced... but then again, maybe that's what you want your character to be like?

If not. I would give your character some one-on-one experience with that tribe... or have the "settlers" come riding into the village shouting warnings to everyone.

Unless you want to do it more along the line of:

Groff: I'm thinking about leaving before the Gribschookas
get here.

Doff: Why? I mean, they seem a bit violent, but who isn't?

Groff: I have a bad feeling about them. Something I heard as a youth.

Doff: Come on? What?

Groff: I don't know... a rumor.

Doff: So, we use caution. When don't we? And then again... they might
turn out to have salt, and news, and ale!

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