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.