Walter Prichard Eaton: I always like to know, before I write, around just where I am going and coming out. It is almost essential to me. Otherwise I would write far too much. Often the story in detail, sometimes in actual plot, etc., changes itself as I go along. Then I have to stop and look ahead and see a new finish.
E. O. Foster: Owing to newspaper training, I mull over a story in my mind until I have it fairly complete before I begin to write. Then I write the story with the beginning of the plot and ending clearly in my mind, after which by means of "inserts" and "adds" I enlarge it.
Arthur O. Friel: I let the story tell itself. Straightaway as a whole. Ending not clearly in mind. Revise comparatively little. Sometimes I rewrite a section, but usually not. My main revision is with the idea of compression and compactness.
In writing, I don't lay out my story and get it all nicely framed up before starting to write. I start with a general idea which comes to me from God-knows-where, and soon I'm marching along with my characters without any very clear idea of where we're all going to wind up. We get into swamps and cut our way through the bush and clamber up on to a hill and maybe find something on the other side; one thing leads to another, and eventually we make a good finish. Then we review our course, see where we went up a box-canyon which got us nowhere, and delete that place from the record of our trip; that's our "revision."
This, of course, is all wrong from the view-point of folks who love to systematize everything; but it's my way of traveling through a story, and I get there just the same. I have tried, on a number of occasions in the past, to make my characters and events fit a more-or-less definite idea of mine as to what they were to do, but it didn't work; they just took matters into their own hands and did all kinds of things I never meant them to, and all I could do was to trail along; and, darn 'em, they made a far better yarn of it than I'd ever have made if I'd clubbed them into submission. So now I've learned to let them do as they will, after I've brought them together in a certain place and started them on their way.
J. U. Giesy: Taking the germ, the "seed" of mental possibilities, I, as it were, plant it and proceed to cultivate it many times for months, letting it grow subconsciously, save for intervals when I water it by objective examination and conscious reviewing. In this way I "rough it in"—gain a general outline of the plot and action from first to last, with the ending always indicated at least. I then write it, filling in details on the main framework as I go along.
George Gilbert: Never map out, unless a little on novelettes and serials. Ending always in view. Never revise plot; sometimes revise diction materially, always some.
Kenneth Gilbert: All the mapping in advance is done in my mind, and I write the story straightaway. Of course, the tale develops and fills out as I write. I write carefully, and I find that I have but little revising to do; usually none at all. Newspaper training, whereby the first draft must be the last, may account for this care in preparing the manuscript. I always have a good general idea of the ending in my mind before I begin, and I have never been able to understand how others can go along without knowing what the next paragraph will be, unless they are willing to rewrite the story several times. I have always proceeded on the assumption that a good short story is "a dramatic tale objectively told." How may it be "objectively told" without the object in mind?
Holworthy Hall: I plan a story in advance only in so far as the development of the main situation is concerned. The ending, however, must be clearly in mind. I usually take as much time to write the first two paragraphs as to write all the rest of the first draft. Ordinarily I complete a first draft in a day or two—and a revision in ten days; but the time taken in revision is generally for style, and not for treatment. That is because, in the first draft, the sequence must be right, or I make it right before going ahead. I ought to say here that by a "day" I mean a working day of ten to sixteen hours.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I have to have a pretty definite scheme, a sequence of events with a denouement very clearly in mind, before doing much writing. This probably comes from being a cripple in the art. Scott certainly didn't. He wrote The Bride of Lammermoor when he was so nearly out of his head with pain that when the proofs came in he read them, he asserts, as if they were the work of another hand altogether. William de Morgan, to give a late instance, said he let the story drip off his pen-point. If I did this, it would drool, not drip.