What's the best way to start an online novel writers' group?

KCathy, this is a great idea! I actually attempted to do this myself, by starting a group on livejournal. Unfortunately, participation really died out fairly quickly.

I think LJ is probably not the route to go since everyone would have to sign up for the group, but perhaps doing something through yahoo groups?

LJ might still be an option, since you can make your community private so only members can read the posts. If you're interested in the guidelines and other things I set up for my shortlived critique community, those are all here: http://community.livejournal.com/crit_me/profile

I think my problem was that I only managed to recruit one other writer who was actively working on a novel. So, everyone else was sort of just there to read and comment and they didn't have as much motivation to participate regularly.

But the LJ set-up works if you can get people who are dedicated to participating.

You can also set up your own free forum through proboards, and you can lock everything so members need a password to see the entries to keep it private.

Good luck with putting this together! I wish I had the time to join, but things are a bit hectic for me so I wouldn't be very good at giving detailed crits at the moment I'm afraid.

lol, what better place than right here?

I'd join up. I'm looking for a quality writer's group, and am having trouble finding one in my area.

If you form one, I highly recommend using Yahoo Groups to do it. I've been part of a small crit group since 2003, and Yahoo provides plenty of space to upload files for comment, and since it's a members only group, all conversation is private and password protected.

I would join one - I've been drifting in the writing stakes lately, and I think having someone to complain/whinge/rant/panic to would kind of help...?