[Whimpers] Why is this hard?
-It says “lift.”
-Like…
-Physically. -No, I think I have to undo this first.
Ok, and then...yup!
[Both:] Yay! [ Shouting ]
[ Laughter ]
I blame Lindsay for this.
Well, um...I blame...yeah.
-Yeah, this is all her fault.
This came about a few months ago, when on Twitter one day I decided I was going to write my own romance novel.
Only it was going to be, since there was Twilight with everything...
And this is a really not surprising thing in young adult literature right now,
the fact that the next big thing is Twilight with witches, and I saw several.
Twilight with angels, fallen angels!
They’re always fallen, so they’re dangerous.
Twilight with fairies, right? -Twilight with fairies!
I’m waiting for Twilight with Loch Ness monsters.
I definitely saw Twilight with werewolves, where the werewolves were the…
[Nella:] Vampires? -Yeah.
But the thing is, it’s many flavors of same story
in different gimmicky, paranormal…
Yeah. So I feel like what we have learned from this explosion of romance novels
and their popularity is that you gotta have a gimmick, and we want in.
-Yeah, we want in
So what is 50 Shades of Green?
We are crowdsourcing the next worst blockbuster paranormal romance novel,
and you’re gonna help.
I mean, we could probably do it without you, but what would be the fun in that?
Because if we’ve gotta do this, for the shits and giggles of it, we want to document it.
We want to see what it takes to write the next Twilight.
[ Laughter ] And it doesn’t have to be Twilight with aliens.
-But that’s our inspiration. -But I want it to be Twilight...[Laughs].
I want Twilight with aliens, but if the crowd wills it so and we find a better idea, then [Mutters].
-But this is the point of this.
We want to go on a journey of self-discovery, in the Lovecraftian sense, and we want you to come with us.
And we want you to be our guides.
-Yes, journey into the belly of the beast.
-This is absolutely going to be a collaborative process.
You, the viewer, get to vote on what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.
So, I feel like this is a good way for us to celebrate our love of books, by imitating books that we hate.
The goal here is to actually crowdsource, with the help of writers like you,
an actual book which we will then actually shop around to agents
and actually get rejected, and then probably actually self publish.
But, you know, it’s gonna be…
[Nella:] So you can see the fruits of your labor -Yeah, we’re going to see the fruits of our labor.
The goal is not to make a deliberately bad book. -Don’t fall into that trap
-The goal is to make a book that will sell, in a bad way...
...if that makes sense.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be funny, though.
No, it can absolutely be ridiculous and hilarious, but you have to believe it.
You have to believe in the book itself.
[ Laughter ] -The badness will be organic.
I feel like crowdsourcing is just as viable a method of writing as, say,
publishing your fan fiction with search-replaced names.
For the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about different topics
within the romance genre that has taken over the world
and these books that are so inexplicably popular.
We’ll definitely be discussing things like why the characters are as they are.
Plot? What plot?
Genre… -Life begins at man.
-[Laughs] Life begins at man.
Mousy, woefully pale…
[Nella:] Thin me! -[Laughs] Woefully skinny me!
My poor, sullen skin makes me strange to others. -[Laughs]
You can really divvy this process up into three parts.
Part one is the discussion, part two is the actual writing of it,
part three is gonna be the road to what is probably gonna be self publishing.
-[Laughs] Yeah, but it’s the journey that is important.
-We will definitely be trying to sell this.
So we’re gonna start on this next week, where we are gonna talk about genre.
We’re going to make some decisions. What is our gimmick?
What is our genre? And that’s where you’ll come in.
We’re gonna have all sorts of experimental ways for people to interact.
Called Twitter! -Experimental!
[ Laughter ] Tweets!
So, you can of course leave comments on our website, at Chez Apocalypse dot com
and on our Blip page, 50 Shades of Green.
You can also Tweet at us at Chez Apocalypse,
or if you want to find my old Twitter that I will probably revive for this project, sexy alien book.
[Laughs] Which is exactly what it sounds like.
And we will start making our decisions,
and we will make a terrible awesome, or awesomely terrible, project.
And remember, the road to madness is only fun when you bring a friend down with you.
-And alcohol. -And alcohol.
-Or weed.