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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/40900
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In Robert McKee's book _STORY_, he says that a whole life story of a character must become a story well-told.

So, it seems that the concept of "story told" is a representation of a "life story" that fits in a finite amount of time (i.e. a book or a movie) compared to the whole lifetime of the character. Also, he says that the story told is a concept that expresses everything that the writer has left out from the whole life story.

Well, consider the short text of Philip Dick, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". In that text we encounter an adult main character, without references to early days of his life.

Now, Assuming that Dick wrote an entire life story for Douglas Quail (the main character of the short text) and then Dick chose just a little part of Douglas Quail's lifetime to write the short text: According to McKee, this fits well inside the structure of transforming a life story into a story told.

But, that doesn't fit into the other aim of the concept of "story told" which is to try and express the other parts that the writer left out from the whole life story of Douglas Quail.

So my question is: How precise is McKee's advice in _STORY_, in order to write a book?

Original score: 5