i'm always thinking about this blog post written by jane espenson circa 2003 when season 7 was airing where she explains how the writers broke down episodes of buffy:
[I]t always begins with the main character – in my case, almost always with Buffy. We spend a lot of time discussing her emotional state, and how we want her to change over the course of the season. Frequently this in itself will suggest a story area – we will find a story in which we explore her mental state metaphorically. The episode “Same Time, Same Place,” was centered around Willow… we wanted to explore her emotional distance from the other characters. This turned into a story in which no one could see or touch Willow and vice versa. The episode “Conversations with Dead People” dealt in part with Buffy’s ambivalent feelings about her calling. She explored the feelings during a mock therapy session with a vampire she was destined to kill. Notice that the episode ideas *begin* with “what is she going through” and never with “what would be a cool Slaying challenge?.
it's amazing to me how simple this is, and yet how many shows could improve by leaps and bounds if the writers tried doing this. this character centric approach is the primary reason that buffy the vampire slayer is a good show, and when btvs isn't good, it's because the writers aren't doing this well enough (ironically, given when this blog post was written, most of season 7 comes to mind, although i do love both the episodes that jane mentions here so ig it's not all bad).
