Feedback for "The Shadow Guardians"

Well, there have been quite a few developments concerning "The Shadow Guardians" of late. I had been meaning to list it on The Black List for quite some time and so, about a month ago, I took the plunge. For the site to host the script, it's $20 a month and $50 to get a professional script reader to evaluate it, which is quite good considering that some script readers will charge you from $600 for their wisdom.

I was very happy with the feedback I got from the anonymous reader. The script scored 6/10, which would seem disappointing (and it was), but after some reflection and marinating in the reader's comments, it made complete sense. I am not a professional scriptwriter (yet), especially not one experienced in writing action sequences, with which "The Shadow Guardians" is peppered. A helpful comment from the reader was that my descriptions read more like prose. One does attempt to put a personal stamp on one's work, but in this case, I realised that I would have to adapt my screenwriting style to fit into the Hollywood mold more, that is, to write in a staccato style and above all, to write sparsely. The trouble with "The Shadow Guardians" is that the story is too rich for a breakthrough screenplay. In reality, this would amount to a 3-hour film, which is entirely what I set out to do, but as the reader pointed out, it is very unlikely that any studio would drop $200 million on a tent pole concept by a newbie.

My conclusion is that I must resort to that ever-haunting virtue that emphatically describes my screenwriting career right now - patience. The reader was very complimentary of the story, which was my primary focus, but when all is said and done, this is not the type of story that finds its way onto the silver screen without an existing fan base in another medium. "The Shadow Guardians" was always meant to be a book trilogy - perhaps it only took this detour to make that clear.

On that note, I also Googled the name (which has been registered with both WGA and The United States Copyright Office, by the way) and it turns out that "The Shadow Guardians" is already a book series, albeit a supernatural romance series featuring werewolves and damsels. Oh well, back to the drawing board, as they say. It will be back, even if it does become a book and takes another name.

Hanfred Rauch