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.
Summary
By assigning seven points to a first choice, six to a second choice, etc., we get a general perspective on the trend of these answers as a whole. Where several elements are named without indicating order of preference all are scored as first choice unless the order of the group is otherwise located. Of 108 answerers 3 were unable to assign relative values, 2 were not tabulated, 2 stated only that importance varies with each particular story and 1 replied, "I don't make your subdivisions."
Tabulating the remaining 100 answers we have a roughly formulated score as follows:
Character 430
Plot 329
Style 192
Structure 180
Setting 171
Color 166
Material 158
All 56
Action 21
Atmosphere 16
Situation 13
Development 7
Abstract Ideas 7
Clearness 7
Suspense 7
Surprise 7
Drama 7
Keynote 7
Humanity 7
Thought 7
Charm 7
Theme 7
Verisimilitude 7
Feeling 7
Philosophy 6
Period 6
Humor 5
Punch 3
The seven elements specifically mentioned in the question were merely the stock names commonly used in the profession that happened to mind and were of course intended only to suggest the general purpose of the question. Neither the seven nor the twenty-one other elements mentioned in the table are all mutually exclusive and on some there is no agreement of definition. This is of no moment. We are not compiling a dictionary or a mathematical table, though some of these summaries may give that impression. We are seeking only to discover general trends. Any deductions must be of a general, not a final, nature, and most emphatically there must always be allowance for the individual case, which on occasion can and should defy all general rules and trends.
The value of such laboratory tests as these lies in our using as a basis, not theories, but facts, our real purpose being not to prove or disprove accepted theories but to draw whatever conclusions the facts dictate. There is, God knows, little enough of this kind of work being done. Instead, the writing world is littered with thousands of hereditary rules, arbitrary dicta, theoretical conclusions and unsound generalities. Here are facts; let us get from them what suggestions we may, each after his own fashion and according to his own needs. I could fill pages with my deductions and conclusions from these answers, some of them perhaps very good for my own case and perhaps very bad for the next person.