How can college writing classes turn into an active learning environment?

In my writing classes, I try to provide my students with various opportunities to read, write, and receive feedback.  One challenge, however, is when students are asked to write individually; they might not be motivated enough to work on their own.  On the other hand, when assigning an activity to a group, there is often one student who seems to be working on the activity while the other students don’t get as involved as required.

I believe writing is a complicated topic to teach and asking students to produce written work can be a challenging process. To address these individual and group challenges, I have come up with a neat strategy that I would love to share with the rest of the educators dealing with similar challenges.