For an Asheville-based trio of playwrights, the answer is simple: applause.

In three years, Los Angeles refugees Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten have written four plays that have been staged more than 200 times across the United States and Canada. Their brand of Southern-fried comedy will be presented this year in at least nine North Carolina communities, including Raleigh, Garner and Wilson, where "The Dixie Swim Club" is part of this month's Theater of the American South.

All three writers are Southerners -- Wooten grew up in Wayne County; Jones and Hope are from Texas. Wooten was a writer and producer on "The Golden Girls" and other TV shows. Jones acted and co-wrote the 1992 play "Dearly Departed," which was adapted into the Whoopi Goldberg movie "Kingdom Come." Hope has been a playwright, television writer and casting director.

They found one another in that foreign land of Hollywood, bonded over their theater roots and Southern humor, and fell into a kind of tag-team repartee.

After working together as a comedy collective for about five years, they bumped up against the age barrier in television -- there's little interest in stories for adults older then 34, they said. The trio bailed out together and moved to Asheville.

"We were sick and tired of laughing at ourselves and not getting paid for it," Hope said in a recent speakerphone call from their office. All three of them cracked up like a sitcom laugh track.

"L.A. was very good to us," Wooten said "We had a wonderful run. There was more we wanted to do."

After moving to North Carolina, they came up with "Dearly Beloved," set in fictional Fayro, Texas, and featuring the Futrelle sisters, Frankie, Honey Raye and Twink. The show was so successful that the writers turned it into a trilogy with "Christmas Belles" and "Southern Hospitality."

You get the picture. Be on the lookout for "The Hallelujah Girls" and "'Til Beth Do Us Part" coming to a community theater near you.

In Asheville, they write nearly every day and try to stay in touch with all the theater companies performing their works. They like to pay an initial visit to each cast and director to share their thoughts, and attend a rehearsal or two. Usually they manage to see each production. They get a lot of story sessions done during those long car drives.

"We all grew up with so many wonderful Southern characters and family and friends," Wooten said. "What we really wanted to do was give these characters to America. It's taken off so fast for us -- we have tapped into something. I think just maybe theater audiences haven't had enough of these characters who are real and lovable."

Ira David Wood III, executive director of Raleigh's Theatre in the Park, is directing "Dearly Beloved" and "Dearly Departed" this summer. He thinks the plays are so popular because everyone knows people like the characters.

"To me, the familiarity with these characters is like going to a family reunion," Wood said. "They found a real core, around which the humor develops."

Like "Greater Tuna," "Eula Mae's Beauty, Bait & Tackle" and other Southern comedies, the works are the opposite of edgy. But that doesn't make them lightweight, Wood said.

"The medicine doesn't have to taste bad to be good," he said. "You come away from these plays learning how to adapt, learning how to work through these family crises."

And companies are clamoring for their works. Jones said they have shows booked into 2013, including plays yet to be written. They track productions with colored flags on a map of America, Wooten said, and "you can no longer see the state of North Carolina."

"We want to see the entire South covered," added Jones, who noted the map is on a wall next to their treadmill. "It keeps us going!"

Cue the laugh track.