# Indirect Narration and Polyphony

## Beyond Direct Scene

Not all storytelling is direct scene and action. Indirect narration encompasses all the ways a story communicates information, creates meaning, and builds its world without putting characters in a room together.

### Story vs. Plot vs. Action
- **Plot** is a device — a marvellous one — but not superior to story, and not necessary
- **Action** must be present (something must change, something must move), but unceasing violent action is usually a sign that no story is being told
- **Story** is broader than both — it is a narrative of events (external or psychological) that moves through time and involves change

Some great stories have no conventional plot. The story is not in the plot but in the telling. It is the telling that moves.

## Exposition: The Lump Problem

### What Exposition Is
Necessary information the reader needs to understand the story: world-building, backstory, technical details, historical context, character history. Every story requires some exposition.

### The Expository Lump
Information delivered as a block — a lecture from the author to the reader, pausing the story to explain. Science fiction writers are acutely aware of this problem because they must build entire worlds from scratch. But it appears in every genre.

### Signs of an Expository Lump
- The story stops while information is delivered
- A character explains something they have no reason to explain to the person they're explaining it to ("As you know, Bob...")
- A paragraph or passage exists purely to inform the reader, with no connection to the character's emotional experience
- The narrative voice shifts from storytelling to lecturing

### The Solution
Break up the information. Grind it fine. Make it into bricks to build the story with.

Techniques:
- **Distribute across scenes** — deliver information only when the story needs it, not all at once
- **Embed in action** — the character discovers the information as part of what they're doing
- **Embed in dialogue** — characters discuss things they would naturally discuss, revealing information organically
- **Embed in perception** — what the character notices and how they interpret it carries information about the world
- **The TK method** — mark places where information is needed (TK = "to come") and return to integrate it later, when you know more about what the reader needs and when

### The Goal
Invisible exposition — information the reader absorbs without noticing they're being informed. The reader should feel they understand the world because they've been living in it, not because someone explained it.

## Polyphony

### Many-Voicedness
The novel is inherently polyphonic — it contains many voices. Writers must be willing to let characters speak in their own voices, not as mouthpieces for the author.

### What Polyphony Requires
- Each character has their own vocabulary, rhythm, preoccupations, and blind spots
- Dialogue should be distinguishable — the reader should often be able to identify who is speaking without attribution
- Characters should be capable of surprising the author — if every character agrees with the author on every topic, the novel is a monologue wearing masks
- Inhabit your characters — let them be themselves, even when they think and say things you disagree with

### The Danger of Monophony
When all characters sound alike — when the author's voice drowns out every character's individuality — the novel loses dimensionality. Every conversation becomes the author arguing with themselves.

## Character by Indirection

### Describing a Place to Reveal a Person
A room, a desk, a garden — described when the character is absent — can reveal more about them than any direct characterisation. What they own, how they arrange their space, what's worn and what's pristine, what's hidden and what's displayed.

### Describing an Aftermath to Reveal an Event
The place where something happened, described after it happened, lets the reader reconstruct the event from evidence. This is more powerful than showing the event directly, because the reader's imagination fills in the gaps — and what the reader imagines is always more vivid than what you describe.

### The Untold Event
A glimpse of the mood and nature of an event by describing the place where it happened or is about to happen. The empty room after the party. The battlefield before dawn. The courtroom after the verdict.

## Focus and Trajectory

Every story needs:
- **Focus** — what and who it is about, explicit or implicit
- **Trajectory** — "the shape of a movement that never ceases, from which no passage departs entirely or for long, and to which all passages contribute in some way"

The story knows its course. The writer's job is to be ready for it — to have the skills and self-discipline to follow where the story wants to go.
