XLAdapt

Novel to screenplay

Your novel,adapted.

A screenwriter adapting a book spends the first week not writing: reading it again with a pencil, listing who is in it and where, deciding what a two-hour film can hold. XLAdapt does that week, shows you every decision, and hands you the structure to write from.

What every adaptation gives you

The story bible

Every character, place and thread in the book, with who wants what and where each thread opens, turns and ends. A document of its own — it doubles as a pitch bible.

The scene index

Every scene of the book in one line — who is in it, where, and how much it carries: setup, a turn, a climax, or connective tissue. The raw material every later decision is made from.

The plan

What stays, what merges, who is combined, what goes, and where the act breaks fall — sized to the film you choose, each decision with its reason, and every one of them yours to overrule before anything is built.

The skeleton

The screenplay’s bones, opened as a project in XLScreenplay: every scene with its heading, who is in it, the beat in one line, and the book’s own dialogue worth keeping, marked as candidates.

Then, if you want it: the draft, one scene at a time

Ask XLAdapt to go further and it writes the screenplay — but never all at once. Each scene is drafted beside the passage it came from and the plan that placed it, and nothing moves on until you have read it, changed what you want, and accepted it. Or asked again, with a note: less talk, she is angrier, start later.

When you reach the last scene, every page of the draft is one you have seen and said yes to.

How it goes

  1. Bring the book in. From XLWrite it is one button on the book. Or bring a Word file or an EPUB into XLWrite first — it reads chapters, italics and scene breaks.
  2. Confirm the chapters. Thirty seconds: here is what was found, rename or leave out anything that is not story.
  3. Choose the film. A feature and its length. You are told, plainly, how much a book that size will have to lose.
  4. Read the bible and the scene index. Yours to keep, whatever you do next.
  5. Review the plan. Overrule anything — keep her, don’t cut the funeral, don’t merge those two — before a scene is built.
  6. Open the skeleton in XLScreenplay and write. Or ask for the draft, and walk it scene by scene.

What it costs

The adaptation

$5

The bible, the scene index, the plan and the skeleton. Free instead with a Xandland membership: subscribers earn one free service every three months.

The draft

$15 a feature

Added afterwards, if you want it. Every scene written, shown to you, and accepted one at a time.

Your book

To read your manuscript and write from it, XLAdapt sends it to Anthropic’s API. It is never used to train AI, and it is not kept there. You are told this every time, on the button that sends it.

Where it stands

XLAdapt is being built in stages, and this page will say so until it is finished. Today, inside XLWrite, it reads your book chapter by chapter and builds the story bible and the scene index, then opens a skeleton in XLScreenplay with every scene in place — its heading, who is there, the beat, and the book’s dialogue worth keeping. Reading is open to a small group while it is tested. The plan comes next, then the draft, then bringing a manuscript in here directly.

Start in XLWrite