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Loving all the feedback. And I’m starting to realize myself that even I need to appreciate guilt more.

I actually had a, er, strange case study in guilt once. I dreamed that I did something absolutely abominable — something I would never even think of doing. Upon waking, it was still real enough that I could imagine what it would feel like if I had actually done that. It was a surreal sense of having lost any scrap of humanity whatsoever like I was almost an animal. Walking in regular society would be something akin to walking around naked. It wasn’t so much that I would be scared by society — I would be able to keep living — but I would feel forever cut off from the rest of the world.

So…there’s that for you.

I loved your point @msqueen8 about how guilt needs to create action. I think that’s really the key to writing guilt well. There needs to be a very dramatic action that proves the character has repented. That’s something consistent throughout all the three stories I mentioned. In The Scarlet Letter for instance, the adulterers had to stand on a platform in front of a whole town. (Side note: I don’t think The Scarlet Letter represents true heart repentance, but I still crazily love the book.)

@maddiejay That’s a good point. The conviction the Holy Spirit brings is unique because it’s a guilt before God, not just other people. I think some ways it’s distinctive on the outside are that:

1. it doesn’t always come when you’d expect it to. For instance, maybe someone commits a murder and then only feel guilty a month later.
2. It drives us to confess rather than hide our guilt. Why might still hide it just because we’re so afraid, but we feel the need to come clean, and not for any sort of compassion or empathy we might receive.
3. We don’t just loathe what our sin did to us, we loathe the sin itself.

@kate Woah, that’s really cool. I guess I never noticed that they all shared the theme of guilt. I guess it’s like foil characters on steroids.

@julianne You’re an INFJ, right?