I once tried an experiment. I took my time and wrote the first draft of a story in manuscript. It sold the first time out. I have tried to duplicate that performance several times since and failed each time.
William Wells: I have a very good idea of what the outline and main incidents of the story are to be before I set down a word and write the climax first, then build up to it. I sketch out scenes and incidents in skeleton form, but in no regular order, then arrange them to make a connected whole, start at the beginning and write the story, filling in and rounding out as I go along.
Most of the story comes to me as I write. That is, when I sit down I haven't the slightest idea of just what words I shall use or of many of the scenes or incidents; they just appear. And I revise to beat the band, two or three times.
Ben Ames Williams: Save in one or two rare cases, I have always outlined my stories in advance. The exceptions were novelettes in which I knew in a general way what I wanted to do—a trend of character—and let this trend develop as I went along. I write from the beginning to the end. The end is usually as clearly in mind as though it were already written, before I begin to write. I revise until I can no longer discover ways to improve the story.
Honore Willsie: I block the whole story out to the end before I begin the actual writing. Then I write it straight through, long hand, let it rest for a while, write it through long hand again and turn it over to a stenographer. I do very little revising. The story is too clearly planned before I begin to need much of that.
H. C. Witwer: I always map a story out very carefully in advance, having all my ingredients well in hand. I never let the story "write itself." I write it straightaway, as a whole, with the climax always in mind when I start. Revise once. Revising being cutting anywhere from two thousand to five thousand words out of what must be a short story, i. e., five to six thousand words. That's my greatest trouble, cutting 'em. When I first began to write fiction in 1915 I had a great deal of difficulty stretching a story out to four thousand words. Now my first draft will run anywhere from ten thousand to twelve thousand words!
William Almon Wolff: To some extent I map out a story—sometimes. I can't follow a rigidly prepared scenario, though; all sorts of things happen, in the writing, to upset such plans as I do have. I write a story whole, always.
As to revision my method is, I suppose, wasteful and inefficient, but I have no choice. I really can't separate first writing and revision, because they go on together. I begin by writing as if there were to be no revision—good paper, carbon, everything. Understand—I know I'm going to revise, but if I admit that, if I try to economize by using cheap paper, or to save the trouble of making a carbon, I can't write a line. Well, I go on until I say to myself—"This won't do!" Then I start over—usually from the beginning. I may have done two or six or a dozen pages; it doesn't matter. And I may do that twenty times.
As a result what is, technically, my first draft, is a pretty thoroughly revised story. As a rule all except the last page or two will have been written from three to six or seven times. And then, very often, I rewrite the whole story, from the start, although some pages won't be changed at all and on some there will be only a few trivial changes.
Edgar Young: Map it out ahead, seeing the climax very clearly, although many details that come up now and then make changes necessary and often help and sometimes cause a man to quit a story.