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THE SCRIBES

Sitting around the room with Buffy's writers feels an awful lot like sitting around a room with the show's preternaturally witty characters: Creator Joss Whedon is a big-screen writer who's worked on scripts spanning Toy Story to Speed; executive producer David Greenwalt wrote for The Wonder Years and created the TV cult classic Profit; executive story editor Jane Espenson is a sitcom vet who survived Ellen; former story editor Dan Vebber was a founding editor of the Wisconsin-based satirical mag The Onion; story editor Doug Petrie is a Nickelodeon alum who penned episodes of Clarissa Explains It All and the feature film Harriet the Spy; and coproducer Marti Noxon's sole pre-Buffy credit was one episode of the ABC weeper Life Goes On. They've come a long way with this show, which has gone from industry joke to cult phenomenon. As Noxon recalls, ''When I told my mother I got a job on Buffy, she said, 'I'm sorry, honey, I'm sure you'll get on something better next year.'''

EW: Do you identify with specific characters?

WHEDON: I identify with Giles a great deal. Because dealing with this world and these actors, every now and then I feel terribly British -- slightly appalled by everything I see. I can't believe I've been put in charge of these people, none of whom pay any attention to me.

GREENWALT: Cordelia. She speaks her mind. There's a certain blunt aspect to her character.

WHEDON: David is what we like to call ''a bitch.''

ESPENSON: Willow, because I'm shy and earnest and I say, ''Oh!'' when I'm startled.

VEBBER: A combination of Xander and Willow. I was brainy in high school like Willow, but also obnoxious and stupid, much like Xander.

PETRIE: Faith, which is really scary. She acts tough, but everything she does is because she's in all this pain.

NOXON: Buffy, because she has such bad luck with men. Until very recently, I dated guys who turned into demons after the first date.

EW: Do you think of Buffy as a feminist role model?

WHEDON: Absolutely. The idea was, let's have a feminist role model for kids. What's interesting is you end up subverting that. If she's just an ironclad hero -- ''I am woman, hear me constantly roar'' -- it gets dull. Finding the weakness and the vanity and the foibles makes it fun.

ESPENSON: Buffy's heroism has two aspects, the fighting aspect and when she gets to be a general -- you guys go here, you guys go there.

WHEDON: From the beginning, I was interested in showing a woman who was [take-charge] and men who not only didn't have a problem with that but were kind of attracted to it.

EW: How much attention do you pay to feedback on the Internet?

WHEDON: A lot. The episodes people like best are those that advance the soap opera elements. It's fascinating to see what upsets them. When Faith went to work for The Mayor, there was a huge debate.

NOXON: I used to go on the Internet, but then the first episode I wrote [''What's My Line?''] aired, and the first posting I saw was ''This is the worst-written episode of Buffy ever!''


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