McAdams, Dan P. "The Stories We live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self" "

My Summary: This story was written by a personality psychologist. Since his job was to figure out why people are who they are he has to listen to their stories. One lady that he is working on her name is Margaret Sands and she has decided that she wants to improve the meaning of her life, but first she must share the stories of her past. In this story the woman is a mother and one day decided that she wanted to take her daughter on a trip and she wrote on a wall. To Margaret this made her feel in powered but to others it looked like an act of vandalism. The psychologist talks about how we live and that we are who we are because of the stories that we have. We can not describe who we are but we must look at what we do and find meaning in that. When bad things happen in your past they might hold you down in your future. Everything that happens to you affects the way that you live. Then, when we tell the stories of our lives we see that the people we tell try and relate to them.

What I learned and Connection to Film: While reading this preface and story i learned a lot about how our lives can be affected by stories. In film you can affect another persons life because if they have a problem the same as one of your characters they might relate to them and do what they do. Also in film we see short bits of what people are, but the stories that are told are the ones that give a film a dramatic affect. We can use this to make a film by creating a documentary or by telling a story in the third person. In a story there needs to be a beginning middle and an end and therefore that needs to be in the movie to.