Ferdinand Berthoud: I'm afraid that in my amateurish way I center my mind wholly on my story—laugh and cry with my characters. However, now I'm learning and getting a little more experienced I am trying to be less selfish and to think of the readers.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: On the story.
Farnham Bishop: Write for the story, revise for the reader. Except that, whenever explaining anything, I keep trying to be clear enough for the layman, accurate enough for the expert, and interesting enough for both. (Result of ten years lecturing on semi-technical subjects to general audiences.)
Algernon Blackwood: I never give the reader a single thought. To some imaginary reader, sitting at a desk inside my own mind, I tell my story. It is written to express—to relieve—an emotion in my own being. It is never written to please other readers or any imaginable public.
Max Bonter: As closely as I have been able to come to it, I am a dual personality when I write. My imagination invents, but reason checks. Reason seems in my case to represent prospective readers.
Katharine Holland Brown: First, write down all the story before it gets away. With no regard for any reader.
Second, revise, and try to make the story intelligible and to make it march.
F. R. Buckley: I center my mind on the story. I have thought of the readers beforehand, that is, I know what will go and what won't: have generally studied the magazine I'm writing for and got general atmosphere of the stuff it uses; can't get more than that. In this atmosphere I have framed the story as previously detailed. That's all I have to do with the readers.
Prosper Buranelli: I never think of readers—am never too sure I shall have any. You don't think of a third party, whom to convince, when you are working out a proof in geometry.
Thompson Burtis: I center myself on the story. Occasionally the readers enter the picture when I am using technical stuff which I realize I must write down to them.