Lucia Mead Priest: There is no hard and fast method of working for me. I should judge by this last winter's action that my mind does a vast amount of milling before my thoughts are concrete enough for a writing-pad. Usually I draft, sketchily. I have a skeleton plan of what I hope to do.
I live much in what I am trying to create. A thought—an action, a phrase or a word will pop out at me and I write it down. But as a rule I write the story straightaway as a whole even though I make patchwork of it later.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Map it out in advance. Either in pieces or straightaway. Ending clearly in mind from the start. Revise endlessly.
Frank C. Robertson: Having the genesis of the story as above, I usually map out the rest of it in my mind in a general way, leading characters, an inciting motive, a crisis and a climax. I may do this in ten minutes or I may stew over it for that many days; then I begin to write it out as completely as I can. I never attempt to block out a story in outline on paper. This, I read, is all wrong; but if I make a skeleton draft of a story, a skeleton it remains until the end. It seems to tie me down, and the story lacks the buoyancy that comes from spontaneous thinking as I go along, with the characters living their own lives, so to speak. I know my characters and my setting, so I have no fear of the story becoming inconsistent. However, the ending is usually in my mind when I start and the characters go logically to it. When the first draft is finished I let it cool off while I write something else, and then I go over it again, pruning and padding as the case demands and changing the structure when needed. The more I write the more I find that it pays to revise, and now a story usually gets three or four rewritings. Before I began to sell any it only got one.
Ruth Sawyer: My stories are pretty well mapped out before I start writing. But there is always a time in the process of writing when the character or plot, whichever dominates, gets a firmer control of the story than I do; and for this reason the story is quite likely to end differently than I originally intended.
Chester L. Saxby: I used to write on little definite plot and seek the development as I went. That, I have come to find, is a poor way to get results and usually makes for wandering and uncertainty in the writing. One does not hold a reader's mind by maundering. The blind can't lead the blind. One does not even tell a story that way, but rather potters. I get the plot idea strongly in mind and lay in the detail that will give the most vivid feeling of the point that otherwise will be merely seen, not felt at all. That's character stuff. I do not outline; I can not hold myself down to that. Often the story takes a turn of its own, but I believe that changed plot development is in my mind, too, or it would not come out. I revise very little. It is hard for me to revise on my own criticism. An editor is indispensable for that purpose. He can actually jerk you out of a warped perspective into which you've hypnotised yourself past comprehending.
Barry Scobee: Really, no. I must have the ending, the climax, the conclusion—usually one and the same thing, with me—clearly in mind before I start to write. Once or twice I have written the last page of my story before any other part.
I get an idea, a situation or condition and look it over or let it browse in my mind a month or a year, or three years, and when I wish to use it I figure out what the logical, or illogical, ending would naturally be, and that is my situation. I must have it before I begin to write. I must know what my destination is before I start on the journey, but I do not need to know what all I shall see on the trip. That develops as I write.
Having the conclusion in mind, I write the title—and seldom change it afterward—then begin on my story. I have written the first three or four hundred words of stories as many as fifteen times, and usually three or four times. By then I am launched and I go ahead rapidly—one thousand eight hundred words in four hours or so. Sometimes I get checked up. It is because interest is lagging, due to my getting in stuff that doesn't properly support that conclusion I have in mind, or something of that sort. Then I go back to the point where it seems to have got started wrong and write, and write, perhaps, until I get on the right track again. It may be that the mistake is because I am getting out of character, or dwelling too long on an insignificant phase. Anyhow, I am developing a hunch as to when the story interest is beginning to lag.
Then when I have written through—the copy pencilled and scribbled until I can scarcely read it myself—I clean copy. There I exercise great care, then send it to the editors. The revising and plot arrangement and the like are all accomplished in that first slow-going piece of work. In clean copying I do just what is signified—clean up the manuscript.