=Bill Adams=: Character and color, (when I've got 'em I say, "Hang you,
Jack--_I'm_ all right.")
=Samuel Hopkins Adams=: It depends largely upon the nature of the
stories. In my "Our Square" stories, setting, color, style and
atmosphere. In my more serious works such as _Success_ and _The
Clarion_, character, plot, structure and the interplay of living forces
which partake of and fuse all of these elements.
=Paul L. Anderson=: Character, material, color, style, structure,
setting, roughly in the order given (not invariably; it depends on the
story). Plot is essential; it's the skeleton on which the living thing
is built. To my mind, the greatest of fiction writers, in the order
given, are Shakespeare, Sienkiewicz, Defoe, and Hugo. The setting is,
properly speaking, a part of the plot.
=William Ashley Anderson=: Material, setting, character, and color. But
this is accidental, and the result of personal and unusual experience.
All these elements ought to be of value, and relative importance.
=H. C. Bailey=: Character is far most interesting and important to me,
then style, and construction comes in the third place.
=Edwin Balmer=: Answered under I.
=Ralph Henry Barbour=: I hold character the most important in writing.
If you've got that, you've got the rest.
=Frederick Orin Bartlett=: Material.
=Nalbro Bartley=: Character development.
=Konrad Bercovici=: All the things put together make a story.
=Ferdinand Berthoud=: Setting. My old Africa always. I couldn't write a
story of anything outside of Africa to save my miserable life. Then I
like fooling with the various men I've known and making the poor beggars
laugh and suffer. Those who are alive of my characters would murder me
if they caught hold of me.
=H. H. Birney, Jr.=: To me, plot and material are the most interesting,
but I consider structure and style by far the most important. Setting is
of minor value if style and structure are good. Witness Arnold Bennett!
A man who has solved the secrets of style and structure can write about
_anything_ and make it salable and interesting.
=Farnham Bishop=: Plot, probably, at present. I feel the story first, as
a whole. Then I begin to see the men who are behind it and ready to
begin living it--character. Perhaps I should have put material before
plot, as the latter usually springs from the former. Setting and color I
find very easily, after I have dug up all the available facts, which is
much more fun than setting them down, for I write slowly and
laboriously, forming each sentence carefully in my mind before I set
down a word of it. Therefore my style is terse and bare.
=Algernon Blackwood=: Material, style, setting, character, color.
=Max Bonter=: Style, I don't bother about. I just try to make my lingo
appropriate for the thoughts I want to express.
Material, setting, character and color always interested me more than
plot and structure. I am just now beginning to realize the importance of
plot and structure and to pay to them the attention that they require.
=Katharine Holland Brown=: Most interesting--and most difficult--the
translation of the story, from an image (very much scrambled, but clear
to myself,) to one that will be clear to others.
Therefore, the structure, and the pointing-up of the plot.
=F. R. Buckley=: Most important ingredient to me? Color! With five
exclamation points.
=Prosper Buranelli=: Structure and style. The rest are easy.
=Thompson Burtis=: In order of interest: Characterization, plot,
structure, material, color, setting. Style means nothing whatever to me
as yet. It never occurs to me. I write as naturally and with as little
trouble as I talk. Consequently I have no style, probably.
=George M. A. Cain=: I can not answer this at all. Plots are my chief
difficulty. Structure comes next. Style is unconscious. Material comes
easily after a plot. Settings present difficulty or interest to me, only
when some peculiar market requirement demands fitting stories to them
rather than them to the stories. My early ministerial experience
fastened my attention upon characters, and I find them without effort.
On the question of character in fiction I shall say more under X. Color
interests me only when I have to get it from outside my own experience.
To me the supreme interest is always the reaction between situation and
character.
=Robert V. Carr=: I do not know.
=George L. Catton=: Theme first, then style, then characters; the rest
about equal in importance, with color last.
=Robert W. Chambers=: Fifty-fifty.
=Roy P. Churchill=: Plot and character first with all the rest trailing
after.
=Carl Clausen=: In their order named: Character, plot, structure, color
and setting.
=Courtney Ryley Cooper=: All these ingredients are necessary, with plot,
structure, material, and one which you haven't mentioned, _accuracy_,
very much to the fore.
=Arthur Crabb=: Mind. Or if you prefer character. Next to that is style.
The structure is, of course, taken for granted. The plot, setting,
color, etc., seem to me to be, as I said before, frames of the picture.
One of my greatest weaknesses is my inability, or possibly
unwillingness, to make the plot strong enough.
=Mary Stewart Cutting=: I think that structure, style, material and
character are important in the order mentioned.
=Elmer Davis=: Character, feeling. (If you've ever seen any of my stuff
you won't believe this, but you ought to see the stuff I haven't sold.)
=William Harper Dean=: To me plot is the most interesting and important.
The rest of it--style, color, setting, etc., can be sweated into keeping
with the demands of the plot. But if plot is illogical or non-gripping
(I do not mean exciting), then all the polishing and retouching in the
world will not make a story of the piece.
=Harris Dickson=: In my own work this differs greatly. I have just
finished a story that deals with the building of a levee. As levee
construction is little known outside of this river country, I devoted
much pains to the setting and color. Besides this, the background of
this story wields a very strong effect on the characters themselves.
Sometimes a story is a character story, and incidents are chosen to
develop that character--as in the first "Old Reliable" story. Sometimes
it may be the story of a single adventure in which the characters may be
subordinated to the events.
=Captain Dingle=: Material, setting, character.
=Louis Dodge=: The first consideration in writing a story should be to
tell a story, I suppose; but that should go without saying, and
certainly style comes second, and your style ought to be you, and not
something you got out of a book. In other words, a story is wearisome if
it isn't original, if it hasn't got something of the author in it.
=Phyllis Duganne=: I am more interested in character, its development
and peculiarities than anything else, in either reading or writing. I
like style and good structure, but I think that real people--real people
in fiction, I mean--who interest me and make me either like or hate
them, are most interesting.
=J. Allan Dunn=: I should be inclined to state that character drawing
was the most important thing to me in my writing. It is very likely my
weakest point but it is to me the most essential thing, the delineation
of character and its working under certain circumstances. I try for
style. Try hard to recognize of what my style may consist. I like to
write a story through one pair of eyes, if possible, and that calls for
an ingenuity that is interesting. Plot comes next to character, then
style, then color and setting. I enjoy recalling local conditions, I
revive the thrill of certain atmospheres, I get a thrill from trying not
to let them run away with me and to use atmosphere and color only where
they tie up with action. And I continually realize that I do not follow
my own few rules.
=Walter A. Dyer=: Leaving out the question of what I believe to be the
requirements of editors, I find the elements in writing most interesting
to me in about this order: style, color, character, setting, structure,
material, plot. Probably I've just reversed the needed order.
=Walter Prichard Eaton=: "Character is plot"--Galsworthy. He said it of
plays, but it is true of stories. Character is always most important.
=E. O. Foster=: Plot, style and setting are to me the most interesting
things in writing.
=Arthur O. Friel=: Material, setting, character.
=J. U. Giesy=: Plot first, character drawing. Structure is a part of
plot, don't you think?
=George Gilbert=: The whole story is important; when I try, consciously,
to pay any attention to the elements you mention, the story escapes; I
have only rubbish left.
=Kenneth Gilbert=: The most interesting and important elements in
fiction to me are plot, style and color. Plot above all others; style
that by itself may "put over" the story when the plot is not what it
should be, and color that the story may grip the reader. Without color a
plot is merely harsh charcoal strokes on a white background, and without
style the story has no charm. Structure, of course, is important, and
material, setting and character will serve to attract attention, but I
hold the three first-named to be vital.
=Holworthy Hall=: First--always--the story; second, the style; third,
there is no third.
=Richard Matthews Hallet=: I would sell my soul at any time for a good
plot, but it must be one for which I can furnish background and
foreground out of my own experience. A plot attracts facts and
characters as a magnet attracts iron filings. If it is really a plot,
and not a pseudo-plot or theme, which is the amateur's usual conception
of a plot, you will be conscious of a quickening all along the line, and
all opposition dissolves as you go along. If it is not really a plot,
the obstacles will look big, the talk will lag and the characters will
have paper legs and vacant faces. Touch a match to it and look for
another one.
=William H. Hamby=: Of importance in the order named: character, plot,
color.
=A. Judson Hanna=: The most interesting feature of my work is setting
and color. All else--plot, movement, "punch" and "kick,"--is a rather
weary necessity.
=Joseph Mills Hanson=: In practise, though perhaps not in theory, the
most interesting and important to me of the elements mentioned by you in
the writing of a story, are, in their order; plot, setting, character,
material, color, style, structure.
=E. E. Harriman=: The most important items in story writing to me
are--the appeal to a reader's sympathies--local color--character--and
the work it will do in strengthening moral qualities, such as honesty,
truthfulness, courage.
=Nevil G. Henshaw=: First and most of all character. Then plot, setting,
structure and style. (I've lumped color with setting.)
=Joseph Hergesheimer=: Humanity! Understanding!
=Robert Hichens=: Everything's important.
=R. de S. Horn=: A question difficult to answer. It depends pretty much
on the type of story. A character story would naturally depend hugely on
the handling of character. I always have an instinctive feeling as to
which is the most important in the story I am planning to write, and I
try to capitalize it accordingly. Wouldn't it be better to say that
plot, character and atmosphere should be considered of primary
importance in the building of a story?
=Clyde B. Hough=: I'm interested most intensely of all in the action and
humanness, that is to say the human action, realistic emotions, desires
and ambitions of my characters which I strive to express in terms of
action. Next is plot and next is structure. Material and setting are
incidental. Style, characters and color should be adopted to suit the
occasion.
=Emerson Hough=: The story. The period. The thing itself.
=A. S. M. Hutchinson=: Character.
=Inez Haynes Irwin=: All these things intrigue me but if I must make a
choice, I will say I am interested in character first; atmosphere, which
I think includes color and setting, second; style third. Of course I am
assuming that I start with a plot but after all I should, I suppose, say
plot first because until there is a plot, there is no writing.
=Will Irwin=: I am most interested in character, next in style, and next
in color.
=Frederick J. Jackson=: Plot and material most important.
Characterization vitally necessary to make the story real. Structure and
style the most interesting, principally because I let them take care of
themselves, if they will. Setting and color? Use a camel hair brush, not
a shovel.
=Mary Johnston=: I can't say. All are so inwound.
=Lloyd Kohler=: The plot probably gets the most consideration; style is
also an important consideration.
=Harold Lamb=: This is a knotty kind of question. Are not character and
setting part of material, and color of setting? Chasing one's
imagination, as it were, around a vicious circle? Just now, at least in
tales based on history or folk-lore, I give most thought to material,
least to structure.
=Sinclair Lewis=: How can one segregate them?
=Hapsburg Liebe=: The most interesting and important things to me in
writing are--first character, then situation and setting, then--well,
maybe structure.
=Romaine H. Lowdermilk=: Character. The characters must be individuals,
not mere types. Oh, how I hate the hero, tall and handsome, a
swift-roping, hard-riding cowboy! Characters must be human and have
mannerisms and act natural! Plot is next. I must have plot or I haven't
a story. "Style" stories are a bore to the kind of people I write to.
All the rest--material, color, setting, structure and so on depend on
the sort of story and the characters. I want (1) people, (2) action, (3)
spots of humor, (4) plot--unless you call action the plot. I don't.
=Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.=: Plot--that is, characters acting and acted
upon--is the most interesting and important to me in writing. All the
rest is incidental.
=Rose Macaulay=: Style, on the whole. But all of them.
=Crittenden Marriott=: Mostly plot; sometimes all color.
=Homer I. McEldowney=: Character and color--with a hope that some day
style may be the most important.
=Ray McGillivray=: Character, plot. See previous answers.
=Helen Topping Miller=: Character and setting interest me most.
=Thomas Samson Miller=: I put _material_ first, character next, then
structure; that is, I would prefer to put them so, but commercially,
_plot_ is first, puppet characterization next (editors have insistently
congratulated me on characters who were not characters at all).
=Anne Shannon Monroe=: It is difficult to say what are the most
interesting and important things to me in writing, for every bit of it
interests me intensely. I even love to read proof--it's a thrill to look
at a galley proof. But the characters, I believe, are of keenest
interest--just as people are more interesting than trees or landscapes.
=L. M. Montgomery=: In my own writing character is by far the most
interesting thing to me--then setting. In the development of the one and
the arrangement of the other I find my greatest pleasure and from their
letters it is evident that my readers do, too. This, of course, is
because my _flair_ is for these things. In another writer something
else--plot, structure or color would be the vital thing. Only the very
great authors combine all these things. For the rank and file of the
craft, I think a writer should find out where his strength lies and
write his stories along these lines. In my own case I would never
attempt to handle complicated plot or large masses of material. I know I
should make a dismal failure of them.
=Frederick Moore=: Plot comes first, structure next, characters third.
If these three are handled skilfully, that is style. Setting and color
not important. A good story is--a good story.
=Talbot Mundy=: I am afraid that abstract ideas are the important points
of a story to me. I don't care so much about a character as _why_ he
does so and so. I like to know his mental arguments and all about his
motives. But I'm afraid that is heterodoxy. Setting and color certainly
mean a great deal.
=Kathleen Norris=: Setting is the most fascinating type of writing, to
me. I should suppose character drawing to be by far the most important
and the most difficult.
=Anne O'Hagan=: Character development, then setting, then style.
=Grant Overton=: It depends on the story. On the whole, the material
seems to me the most important thing. I have seen all the excellences
wasted on stuff that was simply not worth writing about.
=Sir Gilbert Parker=: All are important.
=Hugh Pendexter=: Drama, material, structure, atmosphere and character.
=Clay Perry=: Character, plot, philosophy, style, material, color,
setting, structure. This is the order of importance in which I would
place them. As to their interest, to me, I place character first,
always; philosophy second, plot third and so on.
=Walter B. Pitkin=: The following order of interest holds in my case: 1,
the thought of the story; 2, the plot; 3, the character (or revelation
of human nature in action); 4, the setting; 5, the color (which merges,
for me, with the setting).
=E. S. Pladwell=: Plot, character, color.
=Lucia Mead Priest=: "They are all like one another as half pence are."
If you ask me which gives me the greatest pain I shall confess to plot
and structure.
=Eugene Manlove Rhodes=: Character, plot, color.
=Frank C. Robertson=: The most interesting things to me in writing are
character, material and plot. The most important, because I have to work
the hardest upon them, are setting, structure and color.
=Ruth Sawyer=: Plot--and its necessary structure; character--and its
necessary setting.
=Chester L. Saxby=: Can only say what I've already said on this point:
that development is the thing. It's like saying, though, who is most
necessary on a baseball team. Where would you be if one of them was
lacking? Material is the most often slighted in writing, I believe.
Stories are thin through lack of it.
=Barry Scobee=: All equally, I believe. If my story lacks any one in
proper portion and keeping with the others it will drag with me, and
when a story drags in the writing it makes me wonder, makes me feel
something is wrong with it. However, a story will drag and bore
sometimes when it is good, so one must be careful about self-hunches.
But I must have plot, a puzzle, a frame to hang the story on to get from
crisis to crisis. To me, the plot lends the essential puzzle and drama
arrangement. Structure tells it properly. Style--well, after all, I
don't pay the slightest attention to style, if by that is meant "the
writer's style." I don't know whether I have any style or not, or what
it is like. No one ever told me. Material--that, after all, is the big
thing. But I love the setting if it is in my beloved Southwest, or where
I know every detail--blade of grass, or quirk of human, or smile of
woman--that is, what's back of 'em. Character--well, I have found if I
don't pal with my characters and know all their thoughts, the story
doesn't appeal to the editors. Color? I don't know. Maybe I don't have
much color. The word doesn't stir my thought much. Local color, do you
mean? I'd get that in the setting.
=R. T. M. Scott=: Plot, structure, style, etc., are all equally
interesting to me and equally difficult. Perhaps clearness, suspense and
the surprise ending interest me the most. If there is anything else--all
the better!
=Robert Simpson=: The most interesting thing about a story to me is the
keynote. That decided upon, character, structure, style, plot and so on
follow naturally. They can't help themselves. The keynote is struck, of
course, in or about the chief character. As he or she is, the other
"chords and discords" sound accordingly. I try never to write two
stories alike. Each story, of course, may have a fairly general
resemblance to all of the others from the reader's standpoint, but the
note each strikes is as different as I can make it. I am referring now
particularly to book length yarns, although my notion applies in a
lesser degree to short stories as well.
=Arthur D. Howden Smith=: In order: plot, structure, character, color,
material, setting, style.
=Theodore Seixas Solomons=: Structure and character. Structure will make
or break any story, because the reader's fiction curiosity or interest
is not to be satisfied unless you rigidly adhere to certain laws of
interest by which he is governed. And character is the vitalizing
principle that gives snap and satisfaction to his reading. To put it
metaphorically, if the structure is not right he simply can't swallow
the story, because it opposes corners and angles to the form of his
mental gullet. But even given a proper structure, the story is insipid
to the taste unless the people are real and enough out of the
ordinary--have enough "character"--to be interesting. The other elements
you enumerate, especially plot and style, are great aids, merely.
=Raymond S. Spears=: I find material, characters, setting (atmosphere
"color"), the most interesting; but this betrays, of course, my lack of
scholarship.
=Norman Springer=: I think in about the following order--character,
color, style, structure, plot, material. But not always.
=T. S. Stribling=: I am simply delighted with every one of the elements
of a story which you mention. Take any one out and it is like taking the
tires off an auto. To me it is not a rational question. For instance,
which do you like best, the tires, seats, engine or chassis of an auto?
Sure I like them best.
=Booth Tarkington=: I don't make your subdivisions.
=W. C. Tuttle=: It is rather difficult to say which part of the story is
of the most importance to me in writing. The character has always been
foremost, I believe; because style, structure, setting and color must
follow in order to complete the characterization.
=Lucille Van Slyke=: Something you left out of your list! Something
Barrie calls "that damned thing called charm!" Ohee! If I could put on
paper _that_--I'd let any old body have the plot and character and the
rest! But trying to get it there is like walking on a tightwalker's rope
over Niagara--you're liable to slip off and get drowndededededededead!
End as plain mush.
=Atreus von Schrader=: Of all these, color is most important to me; _i.
e._, purposeful characters in colorful settings. I prefer stories
wherein people do things to those in which nothing moves but the wheels
in the characters' heads.
=T. Von Ziekursch=: Structure, material, color.
=Henry Kitchell Webster=: The most important and interesting thing to
me, in writing fiction, is character.
=G. A. Wells=: I consider character the most interesting feature of a
story. A story without character is minus. Plot also interests me.
However, not too much should happen. About two years ago I read a story
of about forty thousand words. In every line something happened, and
when I had finished the story I was decidedly tired, both mentally and
physically. There is such a thing as having too much action in a story.
I don't care for a story that lacks structure and style, though if the
plot is strong and the character-drawing good, structure and style can
go hang. Setting is important.
=William Wells=: Oh, Lord!
=Ben Ames Williams=: Under these various heads: Plot in a short story is
often the most important element; in a longer story it is interesting
chiefly for its effect on the characters of the characters. Structure
always of first importance. A story can be made, or ruined, by using
narration instead of a scene; by inverting the order of incidents; by
neglecting "sign-posts"; by cheating the reader out of the big moment he
expected; by putting your climax too early--or too late. Or by many
another structural coup or mistake.
Style is essential--and various. I try to tell my story, produce my
effect in the simplest possible way. Material not important except in
the negative sense that some themes are taboo. Setting not important in
a short story, though it may be made so. Always important in a novel. In
a short story you may lift your characters out of their background and
deal only with them. In a novel you must set them against their proper
surroundings. Character: The more definite, the better. Or in other
words, the more the better. Color: I see no difference between color and
setting. In this paragraph I assume to express only my own views, of
course. I've stated these views dogmatically for the sake of brevity.
=Honore Willsie=: I could not differentiate. All are essential to the
finely rounded tale.
=H. C. Witwer=: Style and plot.
=William Almon Wolff=: Well, you have to have a story first of all. So,
I suppose, plot comes first. But you have to have people, too, so
character can be bracketed with plot. After that the importance of
various elements depends, it seems to me, on the particular story.
=Edgar Young=: Style highly important, verisimilitude, plot. With style
and verisimilitude a man can go far in story writing. By style I mean
manner of narration in connection with the particular story being
written.