Buffy the Vampire Slayer rocked our mankind , and it remains one of the all - time great TV show . The story of a doomed lamia - hunter who tries to experience a normal life in high schooling , Buffy still has few worthy successor . And it has so much to teach us about in force authorship .
I come to Buffy after it had already been on the tune for a few years , and ended up watching the first few seasons in basic cable reruns ( and borrowed videodisc ) while also becoming totally addicted to the show in realtime . It was fascinating to be mainline season one and two while watch over time of year five unspool — the show had changed so much in the intervening twelvemonth , and yet a great deal of the themes and character arcs still resonated .
And when I was struggling to overstretch my witch - and - scientist novelAll the Birds in the Skyinto embodiment , I keep coming back to Buffy as a fundamental reference spot — here are 10 reasons why .
1) You can be scary, funny, AND sad
The quality of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an enduring miracle . repulsion - clowning is a affair that we ’re all familiar with , thanks to years of Sam Raimi and Stuart Gordon films , among others . Everybody understands that terrifying , dark , gory things can also become screaming and silly at the dip of a hat . But giving that portmanteau of horror and funniness a vast emotional punch is much , much harder . The fact that Buffy so often pull off to be tear - jerking — and the fashion it uses its humor to make you bring together with its quippy , suspicious characters , so you ’ll aggrieve harder for their wretchedness — is worth study continuously . I ’ve often seek to juggle those three matter ( swarthiness , humor , emotion ) and it ’s even harder than it looks . Two out of three Army Intelligence n’t bad . The enigma seems to be making sure everything come back to the characters . Both witticism and scare can distance you from fiber , so you have to fight against that and check that the characters ’ emotions and viewpoints are always front and shopping center .
2) Stakes are relative (no pun intended)
Buffy is constantly trying to stop the apocalypse , but one of her most epic battles to cease the destruction of the humankind happens in the episode “ The Zeppo , ” where we only glimpse this world - ending threat in the center of a story about Xander , her sidekick , feeling useless and left out . Meanwhile , some of her most heroic battles have much down stakes . Like , I guess the Mayor ’s whole design in season three is just to turn himself into a big serpenty thingy , and pig the town of Sunnydale . Often , Buffy is fighting to save just one soul , or stop a minor unjustness . The end of the populace is an abstraction , and even when BtVS address with it , the show always finds way to make the peril find personal and relatable . And sometimes , the low-toned stakes feel bigger than the higher stake . You jazz ?
And the main matter I learned from this is A ) if you ’re pass to have an apocalyptical scenario , you have to find ways to bring it down to Earth and show rather than tell . And B ) it ’s totally o.k. to have the apocalypse going on in the background , while or else focusing on a smaller , more personal battle in the foreground .
3) The best hero wants something she can never have
A huge part of how this show hold back the tears flowing is by put its submarine sandwich ( and her friends ) into berth where they could never really find happiness . Or at least , not the variety of happiness they want . Case in point : Buffy want to have a “ normal ” life as a high - school student , which everyone except her can tell is never going to pass off . And she wants to have a existent romance with Angel , which is a pipe dreaming at first because he ’s a lamia and she kills lamia , and later because if they have sex , he might change state evil again . And so on and so on . In real life , we rarely get exactly what we want — but it ’s the wanting the impossible so badly that makes us pull for these characters . And then you get the unexpected final payment , like Buffy getting the “ stratum protector ” trophy at the Homecoming Dance , and it ’s more beautiful than you could ever have bear .
4) Places where we want to spend time can be great supporting characters
This is something I check from telecasting , in world-wide , but specially Buffy . The Bronze , the weird all - ages cabaret where they give ear out incessantly , and the subroutine library where they kibbitz about this week ’s lusus naturae menace , experience like places where I spent a lot of prison term in tangible life sentence . Most television show have a handful of standing sets that they use in every episode , and a great TV show will make you care about those places as if they were your own livelihood elbow room or the bar where you give ear out every twenty-four hour period . ( If you ’re a functioning alcoholic , like a lot of TV grapheme apparently are . ) Few shows make their main sets as lovable as Buffy manages to do with the Bronze and the schooltime depository library , maybe because the characters seem to have a lot of love for those billet . In a book , of course of action , you could have as many locations as you require — but I always hear to think about a handful of “ sets ” where the characters are going to spend a lot of time , which the reader can hopefully fall in erotic love with .
5) Big mysteries should always have a hard-hitting payoff
We ’re hold up in the earned run average of the cony hole — although it ’s not quite as rabbity as it was in the years during and immediately after Lost was on TV . Mysteries , prophecies , cabalistic hints , unearthly puzzles , trice - forwards , moody backstories — television receiver is all about keeping you guessing , so you ’ll have to keep occur back every week . And for the most part , Buffy not only pay off its braggart mystery story , it paid them off with a biff in the intestine . Like the prominent prophecy about Buffy in time of year one , or the affair where the First Slayer tells her “ Death is your natural endowment . ” Or Angel ’s secret past times . Or the whole mystery of Dawn and Glory in season five . Because Joss Whedon is not always the best at coming up with coherent plots , these stories did n’t always entirely make sentience , but the big questions in general had answer — and those answers mat up like a smack in the typeface , not just a young piece of information . That last bite is the vital one . The longer you make people wait for a secret , the more disconcerting and dismay it should be when it get in . Do n’t EVER card a secret for months and then have it turn out to be prosaic or harmless . As a rule , people keep secret because they ’re too ugly to share , not because they ’re pathologically secretive .
6) Magic should come with dreams and visions
Magic , by definition , is an gap to the logic of the “ literal ” world . So you have to depict it as something strange and otherworldly , in the thick of our realness . This can be laborious to accomplish — which is why , for representative , The Vampire Diaries always settles for receive its beldame utter Pig Latin while promising orangish swoosh appear over people ’s face to convey that magicky thing are happening . SWOOSH . Anyway … the thing that Buffy did in a lot of its most memorable news report about wizard and mystical force was to incorporate a touch of surrealism , or actual dream succession , or crazy visions . This reached its peak with the quaternary season conclusion , which is just one longsighted cray - cray dream sequence that people either love or hate . And for me , whenever I ’m endeavor to indite a story in which magic trick is a Thing , I often try for a somewhat “ dreamlike ” feel , as if the character are inside a waking dream or something . I do n’t cogitate magic should ever be totally predictable , safe , or comfortable , so it ’s crucial to find ways to amp up the strangeness and fury of illusion , with some languorous experience .
7) Characters can start out as archetypes and then go SO deep
Watching season one of Buffy at the same time as season four or five is an interesting experience . Almost all the quality , in season one , are one - dimensional archetypes . Buffy ’s watcher Giles is the stuffy British guy . Her friend Willow and Xander are inapt nerds . Cordelia is a deposit - up popular miss . Over the course of a few age , they all explicate more layers and define characteristics , until they scantily seem like the same citizenry we met . This happen organically , as we get to jazz them , but also gain from each of them getting characteristics that are at right - slant to their original description . Giles turns out to have this whole other “ Ripper ” side , and he ’s a singer , and he ’s all sexy danger when he ’s not wear his tweed jacket . People normally encourage you to lead off developing character with tons of different attributes and facets , so they ’re complex someone from the commencement . But you could go the other route — make a fictitious character who ’s just a single vividly cast sketch , and then start sum up stuff as you go . That ’s how you often bump multitude in substantial life , after all — you get an impression of “ that stodgy British guy I just met , ” and then you spend more time with him and come upon there ’s more to him than Britishness . My # 1 rule for create interesting characters is to find something memorable about them , so I get concerned in them myself , and then I can slowly sate in the details over clip . Often , it does begin with a thumbnail sketch .
8) Real life can be more terrifying than monsters
This lead back to the thing about stake being relative — but sometimes real - life challenge , like getting through high schooling , dealing with household and admirer , or finding a job , can be more terrifying than dealing with a demon from Hell who desire to eat your soul . This was Buffy ’s hugger-mugger weapon : Making the hurt of regular life every chip as intense as the monster engagement . It would have been gentle for everything to plow out to be a demonic schema , every meter , but Buffy never make it that clearly - gash . Some things just suck up because they suck . This come to its apex in the famous episode where Buffy ’s female parent drop dead — not of a lamia attack , but of a brain aneurism . When you ’re writing a story about wild , fantastical , amazing , otherworldly matter , it can feel like you ’re putting the exciting material on hold when you pause to show your main fictional character fighting with roommates or plow with her family — but what Buffy taught me is that the scarier and more intense you make the non - supernatural trauma , the more intensity you ’ll in reality get out of the monsters when they arrive . Because show the full scariness of material aliveness will make us bond with your champion on a much cryptic level .
9) A great villain has a scary goal
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was at its well when it feature memorable villains — in fact , the time when this show had less scary villain were often the weakest . And one thing that made Buffy ’s villains rightfully terrifying and bewitching was , often , that they want something rightfully horrific . An aimless villain , or a baddie who just want to torture the Italian sandwich , can only go so far . But the Master ’s goal of bringing about a vampire dystopia , or the Mayor ’s goal of achieving jumbo - monstrosity status , actually would make everybody else ’s life ugly . And then there ’s gloriole ’s programme to give Buffy ’s “ sis ” Dawn , so she can find her can . This does n’t just run to villains — any graphic symbol who ’s a major actor in the tale should have his or her own agenda that is n’t just pertain to making certain the fighter is okay / not o.k. . The more interesting and epic the goals of other characters , the more the Italian sandwich can shine .
10) You can use a tired trope without following all the usual boring storylines
This is credibly the most important of all — Buffy the Vampire Slayer is fundamentally a narrative about “ the Chosen One , ” who ’s score from birth for greatness and has a unique function in fighting wickedness . This was already kind of an overdrive story idea when Buffy aim it on in the 1990s , and it ’s desperately in need of a sleep now . But Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes this idea and go with it , in a bunch of directions that go off the obtuse Joseph Campbell garden way of life . She does n’t just go on the Hero ’s Journey like a just drone — or else , she grows and change , and keeps wrestling with just what it signify to be singled out for a role . By the end of the show , Buffy ’s true mission turn out to be make a whole lot of other girls into the Chosen One , too . This has been a huge inspiration to me — because often , these old report are where a lot of the most interesting ideas are , if you could just unclothe back all the drek and rote expectation that have been flummox to them . Buffy the Vampire Slayer made one of the cornerstones of desperate storytelling fresh again , and in the cognitive process showed how you may make any idea fresh — if you just ask the elusive doubtfulness along the way .
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