I'll start with background so you can better understand the idea of the question. A few of the characters are involved in a shooting and only one survives. He goes to another friend who lives downtown where the shooting had happened and the friend asks the character what happened to the others. They had gone and visited him before the shooting. Anyway, the character has to retell the story to the friend. However, the next day, he heads back home which is where the rest of his friends live with him. They, of course, ask him as well, although, this is where my question comes in, should I incorporate the character retelling the story again to his other friends or should I just keep it with the one time and fill it in with something like "He told his friends the story...their reactions were mixed..."?
Unless there's a good reason I wouldn't go into any detail either time if you already described the event when it was happening. The only reason to have him tell people (and go into detail about what he says) would be if he gives a distorted version of events, or to show how his own experience of it differed from the actual events as described already. Well, there may be other reasons but offhand that's the only one I can think of. ********** Ok no, here's another reason—possibly when the event first happens in the story it's presented as disjointed, powerful moments that don't link up in a sensible way (as violent or powerful events seem to do) but when he explains it to someone later he might fit it together in a way that presents some underlying logic or something important that wasn't clear in the heat of the moment. Something like "They saw me! I need to stay away from anyplace they might find me now." But in fact, he wouldn't need to go into detail about what the readers already know, only present this new piece of information—what the event means to him now that he's had time to think it through a little more.
In addition to what Xoic said, I'd say your character might have some kind of insight into the events that's not apparent in the narration of the events themselves. They might know something about the specific context of the event (e.g. they know the shooter), have some personal experience with events of this nature that most readers don't have (they were a first responder to a previous shooting), or they have an unusual perspective on the significance of the event that changes how the story is told (e.g. they hold the police responsible for many of the deaths/injuries and therefore focus on the police actions in telling the story).
