/adaptation

name: adaptation
description: This skill should be used when the user asks to "make an audiobook", "narration script", "narrator", "ACX", "Findaway", "pronunciation guide", "how long is the audiobook", "adapt to a screenplay", "Fountain", "screenplay", "picture book", "spreads", "illustration notes", "art notes", "comic script", "comics script", "graphic novel", "panels", "interactive edition", "turn the book into Ink or Twine", "translate the book", "translation", "foreign edition", "glossary for translators", or wants to turn a story project into another form or language, or to plan a picture book. NOT for writing a new branching or choose-your-own-adventure story (use interactive-fiction), or writing rhyming picture-book text (use verse-craft).

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

edition (a linear book turned into Ink or Twine)

• 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`)
• NOT for writing a book that branches from the start, such as a new

choose-your-own-adventure story (use `interactive-fiction`)

• NOT for writing or scanning verse, including rhyming picture-book text

(use `verse-craft`)

• Nonfiction and poetry collections 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. A short-story collection does fit: see `docs/series.md`, Short-story collections and anthologies.

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`.

1. Add `pronunciation` to every character, location, faction, artifact, and glossary term a narrator could say wrong (`pronunciation: SEER-sha`). Respell for the narrator's language, not always English. Ask the author for any they have not decided. 2. 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, scene breaks as `[pause]`, and the total runtime. The rate comes from the book's `language` (155 words per minute in English; the script's first line names it), and the credits are in that language; time a sample chapter and rescale (see `references/audiobook.md`). `--out` never replaces an existing file under `adaptations/`, so delete the old script before a rebuild. 3. 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. 4. 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`.

1. Add `setting: interior`, `exterior`, or `both` to each location the scenes use, and to any scene whose place differs from its location's (on the harbor wall, not in the harbor office). Ask the author when the prose does not settle it. Run `story validate .`. 2. 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`, `setting`, `time`, and `characters`. 3. Mark each scene keep, merge, cut, or externalize (interior moments that need an action or line). Save it as `adaptations/screenplay/scene-list.md`. 4. Start the script from the scene records:

   story build . --format fountain --out adaptations/screenplay/{story-id}.fountain

It writes a title page, a `##` section per chapter, and one scene heading per scene record with the source scene id, cast, and scene