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.