Because she's nifty...

[thebratqueen]

Here's me answering wesleysgirl's survey:

1. Which single character do you think you are most similar to? (Yes, you may only choose *one.*)

Hmm - probably Wes. Someone who's brainy and mostly for the intellectual stuff but can kick ass when he needs to. But this would be post-spine Wes, not early Wes or even yummy scruffy Wes.

Man that boy has facets.

2. Which characters' heads are easiest for you to get inside of, and why?

Wes, Angel and Lestat, hands down. I could write those boys backwards and fowards and with one plot bunny tied behind my back.

I think they're the easiest because I get their speech patterns and I get how they think. Once you know how a character ticks, you can go far with writing them. I daresay I've got Wes, Angel and Stat pegged better than any other characters.

3. Which characters' heads are hardest for you to get inside of, and why?

Buffy, since I've never really tried her nor have I bothered to wonder what makes her tick. Spike, because writing with stakebait all this time has severely atrophied my ability to write him, even though funnily enough Spike was the first Buffy character I ever did a fanfic about (bonus points to those of you who know the story).

I was having panic attacks (not literally) about writing Willow for wes_visions_rpg but that was mostly because I was picking her up right when her motivations were flushed down the toilet for the sake of the craptacular magic=drug addiction storyline. Since we weren't going with that I had a hard time figuring out how she would react to things. But I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

4. Which characters' voices (dialogue) are easiest for you to write?

Angel and Wes with each other or with anyone in the AI gang. And since we're going specifically for dialogue here I'd say I've got an advantage with Wes in that I've got a lot of experience with Brittishisms so it makes it a bit easier for me to write his speech patterns than it might for someone who's just trying to do this based on that British Tourette's Syndrome that he had in seasons 1 and 2.

Of course the flip side of that is sometimes I wonder how to handle that when I'm doing third person narrative from his POV - should I call it an elevator or a lift? His apt or his flat? Etc. In the end I tend to mix it up depending on how strongly into his POV we are, how much I feel it might jar the reader to have to do the Brit to English translation ("flat" probably not. "boot" maybe), and whether I feel it's a word he's heard his friends use often enough by now that he'd go for the American version.

5. Which characters' voices (dialogue) are hardest for you to write?

Boy does this question make me feel like doing a survey of my own. Hmm - we'll see ;)

But to answer - Sunnydale folks are probably my hardest. I can fake my way through any LA character if I have to (or at least do them in a "get in and get out" fashion so I don't embarass myself too much), but my bunnies take me to LA, not Sunnydale, so SD is where I'm weakest. Then, of the SD characters, probably Buffy, Dawn and Joyce. I just don't click with them the way I do with LA folks. Xander, Giles, Willow, Tara and Spike I can do lines for - and have occasionally during the co-writing sessions that stakebait and buffybot and I get into.