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@daeus-lamb @kate I was going to contribute meaningfully to the conversation, but…. CHOPSTICKS ARE THE BEST EVER and I wish I could eat everything with them.

*gives you both one of Halt’s withering looks* Except I don’t think he took too kindly to chopsticks either.

Anyways, I’m with @germaine-han in that I don’t feel guilt terribly deeply, except in the societal guilt that Kate mentioned, and that… that often rocks me to the core with misplaced priorities. I’m the kind of person that’s used to living her life to “shoulds” that are either self-imposed or society-imposed. One common manifestation of this is “today I should be doing this and that…” then making an impossibly long to-do list that eventually I get too lazy to do, and I end up feeling guilty for not doing any of it. So I’m prone to an inconsistent, feelings-based sort of guilt, and I’m not sure if I would write this guilt meaningfully into any of my stories, except in a minor character.

Other than that little tangent into my own personality, I feel that guilt in stories can often be unfounded or lack depth. If one of the characters feels bad for something they did, and other characters urge them to reject those feelings, it often relapses into something like “I just can’t get it out of my mind!” “It’s over… move on!” “I can’t!” I think it would be better to make the reasons for guilt deep (like in the examples present, when the character has actually done something wrong) and the reasons to reject them deeper — the best being Christ and his salvation. I guess it’s because “I can’t just get it out of my mind!” can seem to represent a lack of strength in the character; what would be more interesting is a character resisting his guilt (for better or worse) and moving on with his life, and then encounters with his past drives him to the point of breaking down.

(You know which character that reminds me of? Edwin Brook.) @daeus-lamb

If a character genuinely can’t stop feeling those things, I think it would also be better to represent the strength of the emotions, and allow the helping character(s) to recognize that as well. Because I’ve been in places where emotion overcomes you, and you just cave in before it, and that can be entirely possible with guilt. Strong emotion like that can come in waves like a fever, where you’ll feel wretched, then better, then worse again.

Anyways, those are just some thoughts. The one about the chopsticks might well be the most coherent/truthful, since I have not given this topic that much thought yet.