Adaptation

Overview

Turn a story project into another form: an audiobook narration script, a screenplay in Fountain, a picture-book pagination plan, a comics script, an interactive-fiction branch map, or an edition in another language. The story project stays the source of truth. Adaptation files live in adaptations/ inside the project, except translations, which become their own project folder with the same ids.

Prerequisites

A story project with story.md in the root and chapters drafted far enough to adapt. Read story.md (title, form, language, status), the chapter and scene records, and the character, location, and glossary files the adaptation touches. Adapting a draft that is still changing means redoing the adaptation; say so if status is not revising or complete.

When to Use

Producing an audiobook: narration script, runtime estimate, pronunciation guide, narrator and production checklist
Adapting the story to a screenplay, comics script, or interactive fiction
Planning or drafting a picture book (form: picture-book)
Translating the book, or preparing a glossary and style sheet for a translator
NOT for publishing metadata, print, ebook, launch, or rights deals (use publishing); audio and film rights one-sheets live there
NOT for query letters or agent submission (use submission)
NOT for new prose in the source book (use chapter-writing)
Nonfiction and poetry are outside the story project model. The CLI checks fiction entities (characters, chapters, scenes, continuity); do not force a poetry collection or nonfiction book into it.

Hard Rules

Never change the source manuscript to suit an adaptation without the author's approval. Adaptation choices live in adaptations/.
Do not put adaptation .md files in the project root: any root .md other than story.md, style-sheet.md, and progress.md is reported as a stray file. Use adaptations/ or a non-.md extension such as .fountain.
Never invent a pronunciation for a real place, person, or language. Ask the author or cite a source.
Retailer and audio-platform specs change. Give the working figures and tell the author to check the platform's current spec.
Contracts and royalty terms for narrators, illustrators, and translators are not legal advice; point to the publishing skill's contract checklist and a professional.

Workflow

1. Audiobook

Follow references/audiobook.md.

Add pronunciation to every character, location, faction, artifact, and glossary term a narrator could say wrong (pronunciation: SEER-sha). Ask the author for any they have not decided.
Build the script:
```
story build . --format narration --out adaptations/audiobook/narration-script.md
```
It opens with the pronunciation guide table, then each chapter with its estimated finished runtime (155 words per minute), scene breaks as [pause], and the total runtime.
Review the script for what reads badly aloud: long dialogue runs without tags, visual-only jokes, footnotes, maps, letters and texts, tables. Record fixes as narrator notes in adaptations/audiobook/production.md; change the manuscript only with the author's approval.
Draft the production checklist from the reference: route (ACX, Findaway Voices by Spotify, other), narrator audition script, retail sample, chapter file list, credits, and AI narration disclosure.

2. Screenplay (Fountain)

Follow references/fountain.md.

Build the scene list from scene records (reading order, or story timeline . for story-time order). Each scene becomes one or more sluglines from its location, time, and characters.
Mark each scene keep, merge, cut, or externalize (interior moments that need an action or line). Save it as adaptations/screenplay/scene-list.md.
Write adaptations/screenplay/{story-id}.fountain. Draft act by act and check length at about one page per minute.

3. Picture book

Follow references/picture-book.md.

Set form: picture-book in story.md, or start a new project with story init "Title" --form picture-book (target 500 words).
Make the pagination plan in adaptations/picture-book/pagination.md: 32 pages, 14 spreads of story, a page-turn beat on each spread.
Keep the text in chapters, one chapter per spread, and the illustration briefs and art notes in the plan, not the prose.

4. Comics or graphic novel script

Follow references/comics-script.md. Break the story into pages (adaptations/comics/page-plan.md), then write the full script with pages, panels, captions, balloons, and SFX in adaptations/comics/{issue-or-part}.md.

5. Interactive fiction

Follow references/interactive-fiction.md. Map the linear scenes to nodes, choose a branching structure with the author, record the branch map in adaptations/interactive/branch-map.md, and write the source for the chosen tool (Ink .ink or Twine .twee) in adaptations/interactive/.

6. Translation

Follow references/translation.md.

Prepare the term base: add a ## Translations section to each glossary term, and pronunciation where it helps. Check new translated names with story names.
Copy the source project to a new folder (without dist/), set language, remove series, book-number, follows, and precedes from the copied story.md, and keep every id as the English kebab-case id.
Write a style sheet for the target language in the new project.

After translation, run the checks in both projects and compare the chapter sets:

story validate ../book-es
story links ../book-es
story continuity ../book-es
story compare ../book-es --against .

Conventions

Adaptation files: adaptations/audiobook/, adaptations/screenplay/, adaptations/picture-book/, adaptations/comics/, adaptations/interactive/. The CLI does not validate them and builds never include them.
Markdown planning files carry frontmatter with a type (audiobook-production, scene-list, pagination-plan, page-plan, branch-map, translation-notes) and updated: YYYY-MM-DD.
Scenes, characters, and locations keep their story ids in every adaptation file, so each adapted scene traces back to its source.
pronunciation is plain respelling in capitals for the stressed syllable (SEER-sha, kah-LEE-na), not IPA, unless the narrator asks for IPA.
A translated edition is a separate story project with the same ids and its own language, isbn, and metadata. Its story.md has no series, book-number, follows, or precedes; those are for different books, and copied values break story links and story series.
When the source manuscript changes, list the adaptation files the change affects and update them.

CLI Maintenance

Use the Story CLI when it is available. If story is not installed, use bun run story -- from the Story Skills repository checkout or the bundled fallback node ../story-maintenance/scripts/story.js with the same arguments, resolving the path relative to this skill folder. If no CLI is available, write the narration script and scene lists by hand from the chapter and scene files.

After adding pronunciation or glossary translations, or setting form or language:

story reindex .
story links .
story validate .

After changing chapters in a picture-book or translated project, also run story wordcount . --write.

Reference Files

references/audiobook.md - Narration script review, pronunciation, runtime, production routes, narrator auditions, audio file checklist, and AI narration disclosure
references/fountain.md - Scene-list-from-scene-records method, novel-to-screen choices, and Fountain syntax
references/picture-book.md - 32-page and 14-spread pagination, page-turn beats, text and illustration interplay, spread brief template, and art notes
references/comics-script.md - Page and panel script format, pacing per page, balloon limits, and page-turn reveals
references/interactive-fiction.md - Branch maps from scenes, branching structures, state, and Ink and Twine syntax
references/translation.md - Glossary as term base, per-language style sheets, name decisions, and continuity across language editions