How to Run Your Comedy Writing Group

Nitty-gritty suggestions for running a smooth comedy writing group and not going crazy.

Writing groups are back on the menu!

Today I want to tell you everything I know about properly organizing your writing group.

This post has a bunch of nitty-gritty suggestions for running a smooth comedy writing group and not going crazy.

We love not going crazy here at Comedy Bizarre! Almost as much as we love going crazy. Paradox!? Nope.

Okay, before we get into it: If you signed up for a Comedy Bizarre Writing Group for this round (summer 2025), your group creation is imminent.

“Dammit, when do I get my group!?” Emails are going out this week.

Also, if you have not signed up yet, this week is your last chance to fill out the form.

If you still want me to matchmake you into a comedy writing group, be sure you’re a Comedy Bizarre Founder.

Then sign up for a group by filling out this Google Form.

(That’s for Comedy Bizarre Founders only—plus those who were grandfathered in previously on yearly plans.)

And if you already filled out that form, you’re good. Don’t need to fill it out again.

Okay, on to today’s post.

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1. Two conditions for good comedy writing groups

Before we talk about organizing your writing group, here are two conditions, or features, of good groups.

First, the group members should ideally have similar—or at least compatible—comedy writing goals. This is especially true when the group is new and when the group members are less-experienced writers.

A brand new group where you’re all trying to write and publish killer short humor pieces is great. As is a group where you’re all writing standup sets. Or a group where you’re all writing TV pilots. Groups with mixed goals can work, but all else equal, the more similar the goals the better.

(Side note: I strongly suspect that groups with mixed goals work better when the writers are more veteran, and when the writers know each other well.)

Having similar goals means more than just working on similar comedy formats.

It’s also good to be in a group with those who have similar ambitions. If you want to publish short humor pieces on comedy sites—including highly-selective comedy sites—it helps to be around others who have that exact same goal. If you have 2 people in your group who are hyper-focused on publishing in selective humor sites, and 3 people who are just kind of messing around for fun and don’t really know what they want, this is not ideal. It can create some friction.

That said, any group where everyone is cool and supportive can be a good group. So I’m not trying to make you overly picky and perfectionist except insofar as I am absolutely trying to make you precisely that. Thanks.

Second point. The group really needs to contain only active members, especially when the group is relatively new. A six-person group where only three people are contributing—and the other three just flake out and stop responding—is typically a massive pain in the ass to the three active people who are now missing the feedback they need to thrive.

If you join a group and suddenly find you don’t have time to contribute, let your group know and excuse yourself from the writing group. Depart the group so the active members can add someone else. This is infinitely better than just having dead weight lying around. (Sorry to call any human being dead weight, but that’s what you are, you know that, right!?) And if you’re in a group with members who aren’t doing anything, kick them out, and find new people!

Exceptions to the above? Yes. If your group actively decides on having a looser submission structure, that can work fine.

e.g. “We have 7 people here in this group, and not everyone needs to contribute every week. As long as we have 4 out of 7 people contributing in any given week, we’re good.”

That’s something you can all decide upon in advance. The important thing is that everyone upholds their end of the bargain.

In one of my writing groups, which has been going for a while, we were much more aggressive and strict about having everyone contribute in the first year or so. But now that we’ve been at it for a while, we’re more lax about it. We have some members that dip out for a while and come back later, and it still works okay. But that’s a privilege we earned with each other, over time, by building reps and trust.

For newer groups, it pays to be strict about group structure. Run it like the Army, and when people stop contributing, sarge should tell them to leave the battlefield.

Okay, now onto the best practices for running your writing group.

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2. Go asynchronous. Don’t rely on real-time meetings.

Synchronous means “at the same time.” A synchronous writing group gathers its members, virtually or in-person, at a single time.

Asynchronous means “not at the same time.” An asynchronous group does not meet at any single time. They instead use online collaboration tools, and people leave feedback and comments on their own time.

For most groups, I recommend the asynchronous approach. It’s more efficient and pragmatic.

Disclaimer: I give this recommendation with a bit of a heavy heart, as I think there’s a real value to in-person writing groups. I’m talking about a group where you can all gather at a local cafe, every week, and dissect each other’s writing for a couple of hours over expensive coffee drinks. There’s magic in that.

I had that in-person experience for a few years, in my early writing days here in Austin, and I loved it.

But it presupposes you can find the right group in your area and get a routine gathering. This is a big presupposition. I think it’s feasible if you live in New York City, or perhaps another major city, or if you’re really tapped into your local comedy writing community and you manage to find a group of highly-committed writers who are willing to carve out an evening. If you can make that happen, by all means do.

But getting the right group in one physical location is hard.

It’s much easier to just find your people online—anywhere in the world since comedy and fiction writers live everywhere. Then coordinate your group on the internet.

We have all the collaboration tools—Google docs, Discord, Slack, etc—to make remote writing groups easy-breezy.

For similar reasons, I don’t recommend that online writing groups try to primarily meet synchronously on Zoom.

Your group members may be in different time zones. And regardless of time zone issues, it’s hard to find consistent Zoom meeting times that work for everyone outside of work hours. Everyone is busy and over scheduled. It’s crazy out there.

Jen can only do the writing group Zoom meetings on Monday or Wednesday nights because she has jiu-jitsu the other nights, and she records her podcast on the weekends.

But Tom can only make the Zoom meeting on Saturday afternoons because he has his kids the rest of the time, except for second Saturdays when he takes them to the aquarium.

And Amanda is only free Tuesdays between 5:30 and 5:50 because blah blah blah.

Ugh.

Trying to get 6 adult writers to meet at the same time outside of work is a great way of lowering the odds that the group will happen. Real-time meetings are hard to coordinate and even harder to stick to consistently as people’s commitments shift.

Zoom meetings are a nice way to initially meet people for a one-off meet-n-greet. And they’re nice for, say, an optional quarterly check-in. Or maybe even a monthly check-in if you’re ambitious. (And if you do decide to schedule a Zoom, try using Doodle.)

But otherwise, lower the friction: go asynchronous.

Use collaboration tools— Google Docs, and a message board system like Discord or Slack—to run your writing group. People can leave comments on their own time.

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3. Recommended writing group collaboration tools and structure

Here are all the collaboration tools I recommend, and how I structure everything.