Video star and New York Times bestselling author Grace Helbig is enlisting her fans to use storytelling app Wattpad to write the first-ever crowdsourced novella in her new eight-episode weekly web series, Writing With Grace. The series premieres today on Helbig's YouTube channel as part of AT&T Hello Lab, a yearlong project featuring 10 digital creators at the forefront of mobile entertainment. Check out the first episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u1IwN6CaTs&feature=youtu.be
In a first-ever celebrity fan collaboration with Wattpad, Writing with Grace follows the creative journey that Helbig and her fans embark on to complete Freak Week, a novella about how to survive 'Freak Week,' a fictional high school phenomenon that occurs once a year in which crazy things happen, from actual cats and dogs raining from the sky to emotions
BECOMING public and actually floating above teenagers as they feel. It's all about surviving the week without too much teenage embarrassment especially in front of a crush.
Helbig writes the first and last chapter, but the rest of Freak Week will be written by fans on Wattpad, the fast-growing social platform that layers mobile and social elements on top of traditional storytelling to offer a new entertainment experience. Helbig will be giving fans writing prompts and advice, hosting workshops and even inviting fans to help select the chapter cover art. Fans who want to participate in writing Freak Week are encouraged to create an account on Wattpad and follow the "@writingwith" profile for details on how to participate.
"Freak Week is a novella that my fans and I get to write together. I am looking to them to unleash their wildest and weirdest imaginations, flex their narrative muscles and get super-creative so we can come up with the most amazing story ever," said Helbig. "It will be the coolest writing workshop ever. Please don't let the dorkiness of my enthusiasm sway you from participating!"
Every Thursday, Helbig will select and showcase her favorite chapter submission to drive the story forward in Writing With Grace on YouTube. After showcasing the current chapter, Helbig will issue a call for submissions for the next week's chapter, and participants will have four days to write and submit on Wattpad by the Sunday night deadline. The
Youtube series will also feature alternate chapter submissions, a look at what inspired the final choice as well as direction for the next chapter. The first fan-written chapter will be featured in the Writing With Grace episode posting April 14 on YouTube. In addition to being featured in the series, each chapter will also live on Wattpad.
The completed novella will be read aloud by Helbig and her influencer friends during a live event at Vidcon, the world's largest gathering of online video stars and fans June 23 through 25 in Anaheim, CA. The entire Freak Week novella will then be live on Wattpad.
"Writing with Grace is exactly what we set out to do with AT&T Hello Lab - help a creator take her audience in an exciting new direction," said Valerie Vargas, vice president, Advertising & Marketing Communications, AT&T Entertainment Group. "Grace's fans are going to love this and we've got a lot more coming from the other AT&T Ambassador creators in the program."
Added Billy Parks, senior vice president of Fullscreen's Strategic Content Group, "Grace Helbig is a one-of-a-kind talent with an amazing fan base, which is why it was so important to have Writing With Grace showcase her incredible creativity while also enabling her fans to participate. Who else but Grace would come up with a Shih-Tzu storm that involves actual dogs and cats raining down?"
AT&T Hello Lab has already debuted two series since announcing the project in February, including Damon and Jo's Dare to Travel, a
Youtube travel series sourcing dares from fans across multiple social platforms, and Make My Monday, a Snapchat series that launched earlier this week starring Snapchat Superstar Shonduras executing fan challenges in real time.
Wattpad is a free app that lets people discover and share stories about the things they love. More than 40 million people around the world turn to Wattpad to find entertainment that matches their interests and fits their schedules. Wattpad stories are serialized and the entire community participates in the storytelling process through comments, messages, and multimedia.
Watch AT&T Hello Lab at @ATTHelloLab
Follow @ATTHelloLab across Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube.
Follow Writing With Grace on Wattpad at wattpad.com/writingwith as well as Helbig's channels, including YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Wattpad and Snapchat: @realgracehelbig
About Strategic Content Group Fullscreen's Strategic Content Group (SCG) creates friendship-fueled entertainment franchises that are scalable, immersive, and measurable for partners seeking lasting connections with their audience unbound to any one message/time. Helmed by Billy Parks and Bryan Thoensen, SCG created SnapChat's first scripted series Snapper Hero, which was shortlisted at Cannes and won a Streamy Award. Their first project was @SummerBreak, an unscripted YouTube-based Streamy Award-winning reality series now in its third successful season.
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