A screen-obsessed 11-year-old gets trapped inside the dusty book left to him by his Grandfather where he must learn to visualise the fairytale world around him, play through the story, and imagine his way to the very last page.

Yeah, I really like this idea. Thanks, dpg!

I'm not sure kids today could handle Artax dying. Scarred me for life! hahaha

This. Bastian from The NeverEnding Story wants a 2020 do-over!

My thinking is that having a female-male protagonist pairing automatically doubles the potential audience in the youth demographic. (Maybe they are grandchildren of the book's owner.)

It also enables the story to play off gender roles, behavior and archetypes for conflict (and comic relief). Like he imagines/envisions his worst fear in the form of a dragon; she sees it as wolf. Or zombie versus vampire. Or all of the above and more. IOW: the dreaded, shadow "other" is a shapeshifter. He over-analyzes, mansplains everything. She trusts her intuition and emotions. (Or flip the tropes: she hits the pause button in every situation to over-analyze; he impulsively goes with his guts.)

Whatever. Best wishes with the project.

Thanks Richiev. It was actually something my 4 year old said to me. I was doing some colouring and he said that someone was naughty so we should "lock him up in a book"! I can't take the credit haha.

This is a great premise, a boy who hates reading becomes stuck inside a magical book, and must finish the book to escape.

Great idea!

As for the primary antagonist, I was going to have it as like his deepest fear realised in an imaginative fairytale way - like a dragon or something but I feel like this is a bit cliché and I was running out of words so I wanted to suggest that his primary obstacle is actually his own inability to imagine the world as described by the words of the book. Visually, I imagine this actually being represented on screen by him existing in the white spaces of a book where an illustration would go and it's only populated by things when he imagines they're there. The words on the page exist until the final confrontation, when everything is blank. I guess up until that point, the thing at the end is "the most terrifying monster ever imagined" as that leaves it up to the protagonist to imagine.

Still kinda working through this one, it's an interesting one!

Thanks for your comments, as always.

Who/what is the primary antagonist/obstacle in the story world that must be overcome?

Suggestion: Amp up the conflict with dual protagonists. A boy and girl must work together to get to the last page of the book -- and freedom. But they have diametrically different visions of how to proceed at every plot point. They argue over everything.

Working title : Write of Passage.

fwiw