Spontaneous Musings

I agree. Whedon feels like an intuitive writer to me, who basically does a general plot arc outline then fills in the story as he goes. I remember what he said about S7 - he'd told Marsters that he knew Spike was going to die, had literally written Chosen and Lessons, but had no idea what was happening in between. (ie. I'm going to kill you but I've no idea what I'm doing with you until then.) Same deal with S2 - he knew he was turning Angel into Angelus, had written Innocence and Becoming, but outside of that? He's a writer who works better with collaborators - who can fill in the nitty gritty and bounce ideas off him. Whedon isn't really into the details, he's more the big picture. The arc. I'm willing to bet that for S8 that he wrote Long Way Home and plotted out the last five issues of the arc way ahead of time. But everything in between? Not so much. He did that in the tv series - he would plot out the key episodes for the big arc, and let the details take care of themselves. That's not to say, Whedon doesn't care about the details, he does, but he doesn't focus on them as much as he does on the whole arc or big picture. He also, and I don't understand why he chose not to do this - he didn't tell any of his writers who Twilight was or what the arc was. Espenson didn't know what was going to happen next when she wrote Retreat. That's odd.
And I think it had a major effect on the story's cohesiveness and continuity. If you don't know Twilight is Angel - that is going to have an affect on how you write him.