Wednesday, January 14, 2009 "Pilgrim's Progress"

I've made some more progress on "Pilgrim" this week. The story is starting to develop momentum. I've introduced the main character and his dilemma and I've arrived at the first action sequence. It's an "escape" sequence that is drawn from the book, but given added intensity and danger. The scene is taken from the beginning of Bunyan's work, where Christian, determined to escape judgment, plugs his ears and runs away shouting "Life! Life! Eternal life!"

The circumstances for his departure from the "City Of Destruction" are a little more dire and with a lot more "fireworks", but the emotional material from the original version of the scene naturally lended itself to the creation of the more "explosive" version I'm developing now.

I also gave my main character a last name yesterday. His first name is Christopher, or Chris, in reference to the main character, Christian, in Bunyan's work. The title of "Pilgrim" is not one we use anymore, even in fantasy fiction. Nor do we use the term pilgrimage. But I thought "Pilgrim" would be a fitting last name for our main character. I'll be using his first name almost exclusively in the script, but adding Pilgrim as his last name will hopefully work well and serve as another nod to Bunyan's classic.

This has also led me to remove the "The" from this project's title. Calling it simply "Pilgrim's Progress" attaching it more to the main character as a unique individual, while still undeniably retaining recognition as an adaptation of the original book.

Well, that's it for now!

-Paeter Frandsen