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Social Media Pet Peeves

By Cindy on October 11, 2011

I’m a pretty easy going person and I don’t let a lot bother me. But I do have some social media pet peeves. Who doesn’t?

The new Facebook changes. Hate them. Now, I know it’s a free service and they can do what they want and at least there’s a work around if you hate the new news feed but I am getting close to jumping ship. Google+ is looking mighty good right now. If I could just get all of my Facebook contacts over there.

Had to get that off my chest. What I really wanted to talk about were things the people who use social media do that annoy me.

1. InkCanada – ignore this one, it doesn’t apply to you. If you’re inviting me to an in person Facebook event make sure I’m at least in the same province as the event. You can imagine how ridiculous it is to be invited to something that isn’t in my province but I get ones that aren’t even in my country.

2. Friends who turn off their wall functionality.

3. A gazillion posts a day, every day, promoting your book. Keep it up and I will unfriend you.

4. Protecting your tweets. If you don’t want people reading your tweets send an email. I won’t request to follow you.

5. Using a service to verify I’m a person. I won’t click on that link either.

6. People who aren’t celebrities who have hundreds (or thousands) of followers and only follow a select group. If you have 4000+ followers and you only follow 100+ who do you think you are? I won’t follow you.

7. People who aren’t celebrities who don’t @ reply if you tweet them. I’m lucky that most of the people I tweet to do reply.

8. People who use a service to find people to follow and then auto unfollows them if you haven’t followed them back in X number of days. People are busy. They have lives, families, vacations, work. Sometimes it’s not possible to follow you back within three days. I don’t follow back until at least the fourth or fifth day to weed these ones out.

9. People who follow just to get followers. You know the ones. If you don’t follow them back they unfollow you. FYI, not everyone is going to follow you back.

10. People who aren’t celebrities who don’t follow you back. It’s just good Twitter karma to follow back. There are ways to filter tweets, mute people, if you get too many tweets in your stream.

Okay, here are some celebrities who have been known to @ reply or retweet. Keep in mind they don’t ALWAYS reply or retweet:

Jason O’Mara, Angie Harmon, Gordon Ramsay, Eric Johnson, Alyssa Milano.

Until next time…

Cindy

Terra Nova is nothing new

By Cindy on October 10, 2011

I had been eagerly awaiting the premier of Terra Nova since I first heard about it in 2010. I was a little disappointed that instead of airing it in January 2011 as first indicated they waited for the 2011 – 2012 season. The complaint I have with Terra Nova is the same complaint I have with most shows theses days. There’s nothing new. As a writer and an avid TV watcher I beg the writers to please come up with new twists, better dialogue, dump the cliches.

Terra Nova was a bit too predictable for me in the first few episodes. I know you need archetypal characters but I found the characters to be stereotypical. And don’t get me started on the cliches. Speaking of predictable, the boyfriend could recite most of the lines before they were actually spoken. How’s that for predictable?

I hope I’m wrong but to me it’s obvious that the inside man the Sixers have is the guy who likes the teenage daughter. If it’s not him, then bravo to the writers for that mislead. If it is him then shame on the writers for making it so obvious. I guess only time will tell. I also think it might be the wife’s doctor friend.

I will keep watching to see if it gets less predictable. So far though it’s Earth 2 but on earth instead of a different planet. I was extremely happy that the drawings weren’t done by aliens at least.

I’d like to see some twists and turns. Some good dialogue. The possibilities are almost endless, especially because this is a different time stream. Writers, go ahead, surprise us.

Until next time…

Cindy

Guest blogging about switching sides

By Cindy on August 11, 2011

As part of my blog tour for my Is That Hollywood Calling? workshop I’m over at Pink Fuzzy Slipper Writers today talking about switching sides. Ditching the novels for a while to write screenplays. Pop over and say hi. You could win one of my workshop lecture packets!

Until next time…

Cindy

Zookeeper not a keeper

By Cindy on August 3, 2011

I was lucky enough to read the Zookeeper script three years ago. It was dated April 18, 2007. I really enjoyed it. Back then I wrote:

Story: I have to say I really like this story. It was funny, cute, with likable characters. I thought it was a good family movie.

Characters: Andrew is very likable. He was a lot more distinct than Kate and Trent. The animals have distinct voices, more so than some of the people. Good job with making Trent unlikable but not in an obvious way.

Dialogue: The dialogue was good. Some parts were laugh out loud funny, mostly dialogue from the animals. I didn’t see anything really distinct in Kate’s dialogue.

Overall thoughts:

This was a really engaging story. I was able to overlook the flaws and continue to enjoy the story. Loved the ending. Very nice way to tie it all up. Great symmetry.

This past weekend I saw the movie at the drive-in. I couldn’t wait to see it because I enjoyed the script so much. You know how you should always read the book first before you watch the movie based on the book because the book is usually better? The script was WAY better. The original script was written by Jay Scherick & David Ronn. The end of the movie had five people with writing credits. I didn’t really care that some of the names had been changed. His name was Andrew in the original script. There was no Stephanie. Gale was Trent. Gale was unlikeable in a really obvious way. Over the top way. Seriously, what happened to subtle?

I understand some of the changes made to the script. For example:

It’s not really showing us the down side of being a zookeeper. The scene added to the movie did show that, though I thought it was over the top. I wasn’t thrilled with the ending of the movie. I thought the script’s ending was much stronger. Had much better symmetry.

So, maybe I should start watching the movies first before reading the scripts. Especially if there are more than two writers with writing credits for the movie. That way I might avoid disappointment. If this were a book it wouldn’t end up on my keeper shelf. The DVD will not be sitting on my DVD shelf when it comes out.

Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the dish. The proof is in the movie.

Until next time…

Cindy

Is That Hollywood Calling – The Blog Tour

By Cindy on July 29, 2011

I’m teaching my month long Is That Hollywood Calling? workshop in September and I’ve decided to do a blog tour to promote it. I’ve never done a blog tour before so I hope I have fun, I hope the readers have fun and I hope I entice a few of you to check out the class. The link to the class information is on the home page here on my website and on the post over at my first stop in the tour.

Today I’m at Amber Kallyn’s blog talking about action. And it might not be the kind of action you’re thinking about.

Pop over if you can and leave a comment for your chance to win the ITHC lecture packet.

Until next time…

Cindy

The final launch

By Cindy on July 11, 2011

The boyfriend and I headed to Florida last week to watch the final launch of Atlantis. I hope NASA starts another space program in the near future. The launch was amazing. We had a great spot to watch it lift off. We went to a park and found a spot near the water. By the time we arrived at 5:15 a.m. all the spots in the “front row” were taken. People had camped out. We still got a good spot. Light travels faster than sound so a few minutes after lift off we heard the rumble. The shuttle had already disappeared into the clouds.

We spent way too much money at the Astronaut Hall of Fame museum and we didn’t even go inside. We just went to the gift shop. We’re going to go back once we’ve visited the Kennedy Space Center. At least we’ll have the souvenirs out of the way.

Last night we went to The Holiday Inn in Titusville to check out their restaurant. The food was pretty good. We had a bonus celebrity sighting when I saw Jason Ritter walk through the lobby. He had a small entourage and was sitting in the lobby when the boyfriend and I left. I had to check his Twitter feed to make sure it was really him. Then I also confirmed with our waiter. I just love the celebrities who tweet.

Some pictures from the launch:

Must get back to goofing off.

Until next time…

Cindy

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