Sara, regarding cliffhangers, I don't think it's inherently bad to leave your BR with one, as long as you recognize that they might be screaming at you for what comes next. <g>
Seriously, though, I've left my BRs with cliffhangers, either suspenseful ones or just plain boring ones, just because I hadn't written what came next yet. (I still give Wendy a lot of credit for putting up with me on WFBL. I would leave her for weeks or months at a time simply because I had given her all I had and hadn't had time to write more.) And I've BRed stories with cliffhangers, as well, and have happily written to the author with a "Ack! You can't leave me there!" that left us both laughing.
Sometimes that was all they'd written, and sometimes they'd send me what they had so far of the next section, but as long as I felt we were communicating on the story, I was fine.
So to me, the difference between a BR experience that leaves me excited and one that leaves me frustrated is how I interact with the author. I once stopped BRing for someone in the middle of a story because she was making me crazy by withholding information. For example, she'd send me a part that I felt was wildly out of character, but when I'd tell her so, she'd just keep sending me vague (and I felt patronizing) comments like "Ha ha, you'll find out soon enough!" instead of letting me know what she had in mind or why she was doing it the way she was. This was incredibly frustrating to me because I was putting in a lot of time making what I hoped were insightful and helpful comments, only to have it made very clear that she wasn't changing anything nor even cared what I thought of it. That's when I finally told her that I would just read the story when it came out and to please stop sending me sections. When a BR job is frustrating rather than fun (for either party -- I've certainly used BRs who didn't share my vision of the characters and probably drove them nuts by not taking their suggestions
) -- then those two people are not compatible and should not be working together.
Kathy
