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.