Story to Script Rewriter

Story to Script Rewriter: turn a post or article into a spoken short-form script

Paste a Reddit post, an article or any block of text and get back a script written to be read out loud: a hook that opens it, the narration itself, a title, two alternate hooks, the word count and roughly how many seconds it runs. You choose the tone, the platform, the point of view, the language and the target length.

It runs on your own OpenAI key, which you paste into the input. Without one the run still finishes, but it writes a clearly labelled canned sample instead of a real rewrite, so you can see the shape of the output before committing anything.

🔍 What Story to Script Rewriter does

Reading well and holding a viewer are different jobs. A Reddit post can be a great read and still open with three sentences of setup that nobody watches past. This rewrites the same story so the turn lands in the first line and the rest earns its seconds.

Each source becomes one model call and one row. tone picks the voice: dramatic, casual, funny, emotional, educational or hype. platform shifts the pacing and the hook style for tiktok, youtube shorts, instagram reels or youtube. targetSeconds sets the length, worked as roughly 150 spoken words a minute. pov keeps the original voice or moves it to first or third person. language writes the output in whatever you name.

sources takes a batch: plain strings, or objects, in which case it reads selftext, then scriptText, then body, then text, then title. That last part matters because it means a Reddit scraper's rows go straight in with no reshaping.

📥 What you give it

{
  "text": "My neighbor kept parking in my spot. I asked nicely three times.",
  "tone": "dramatic",
  "platform": "tiktok",
  "targetSeconds": 45,
  "openaiApiKey": "sk-..."
}

Send something. With a key set and both text and sources empty, the run rewrites a built-in example story and that row is charged like any other. It is the one way to pay for a script you did not ask for.

Never paste your key into a published Apify task. Task inputs are readable by anyone who opens the page. Put it in the run input, or supply it per call.

📤 What you get back

Every run of this actor so far has been keyless, so what follows is the real labelled sample row from run T02XHkNtR8DzTbAbR, trimmed for length. With your key set, the same fields are filled by the model instead of the canned text, and _sample and _notice are not there.

{
  "ok": true,
  "source": "My neighbor kept parking in my spot. I asked nicely three times. ...",
  "title": "Sample Viral Short Script",
  "hook": "I thought this tiny mistake was over, but then the twist hit.",
  "script": "I thought this tiny mistake was over, but then the twist hit. My neighbor kept parking in my spot. I asked nicely three times. ...",
  "altHooks": [
    "This looked like a normal day until one detail changed everything.",
    "Nobody expected the ending to come from such a small mistake."
  ],
  "wordCount": 58,
  "estSeconds": 23,
  "_sample": true,
  "_notice": "SAMPLE OUTPUT - provide openaiApiKey for a real AI rewrite.",
  "tone": "dramatic",
  "platform": "tiktok",
  "requestedSeconds": 45
}

🧾 Reading the output

Rows land in two places, and which one tells you what happened.

So an empty dataset after a run with a key means every source failed. Open the key-value store tab and read the error on each one: it carries the status your provider returned, or a note that the model's answer could not be read as JSON.

One source failing does not stop the others, and the run still finishes green either way, so check the dataset row count rather than the run status.

▶️ How to run it

1. Open Story to Script Rewriter and click Try for free. 2. Run it once with no key and look at SAMPLE_AND_NOTICES to see the output shape. 3. Paste your key into OpenAI API key. 4. Put your story into Text / story, or a batch into Sources, then set the tone, platform and target length. 5. Click Start, then read the dataset or export it.

💰 How much does it cost?

$0.02 per script. Flat on every Apify plan, no volume tiers.

You pay per script row that reaches the dataset. Keyless samples and sources that failed go to the key-value store instead and are not charged as scripts. Your OpenAI usage is billed by OpenAI on your own key, separately from this.

💡 What people use it for

• Piping a Reddit scraper's rows straight into sources and getting a week of narration in one run.
• Testing three tones on the same story, then picking the one that reads best out loud.
• Turning a long blog post into a 45-second version for Shorts without rewriting it by hand.
• Building an A/B test out of hook and the two altHooks on a piece that underperformed.

🚧 What it does not do

• No voiceover, no video, no images. It writes text. The routing table below points at the rest.
• No fact checking. It rewrites what you gave it, including anything wrong in the source.
• No length guarantee. targetSeconds is an instruction to the model, not a limit, so check

estSeconds on the row.

• Long sources are cut at 8,000 characters. Anything past that is not seen, so trim a long

article to the part that matters.

• No retry. If your provider refuses one source, that source fails and the run moves on.
• No scraping. It does not fetch a URL. Send the text.
• The prompt is tuned for English. Other languages work, but the pacing advice is written for

English rhythm.

🧭 Which short-form video tool do you need?

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need my own OpenAI key? For real output, yes. Your key, your OpenAI bill, and nothing goes through ours.

What happens without a key? You get a labelled sample in the key-value store. Nothing reaches the dataset, so there is no script row to charge for.

Can I use a different provider? Yes, if it speaks the OpenAI chat format. Put its address in baseUrl and its model name in model.

Can I batch a whole subreddit? Yes. Put the scraper's rows into sources and every post becomes its own row.

Why is my script shorter than I asked for? targetSeconds steers the model, it does not bind it. Raise it, or send a richer source.

Where did my failed sources go? The SAMPLE_AND_NOTICES record in the run's key-value store, with the error on each one.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Send the run id and the tone, platform and target length you used. Never send your key. The error text in SAMPLE_AND_NOTICES usually names the problem by itself.