Shackled Heart: character-driven fiction, guilt and moving on
Crystal describes writing Shackled Heart, her first fully fictional novel, after five revisions: she is a character-driven writer who started with a man going home who didn't want to go home — because home felt like prison — so he went to prison. Charlie lost his wife in a horrific car accident he was driving, and carries immense guilt, wishing it had been him. His parole officer, McKenna Christensen, is a workaholic who witnessed the accident and saw his wife's body, so she dreads having him on her caseload. The hosts contrast critique of fictional characters (personal — 'that's my Charlie') with fictionalized real people, whom readers only get attached to; one reader wept with joy to learn Annie from Completely Yours is now engaged. Asked what writing about love has taught her, Crystal says people undervalue their relationships and that every story showcases sacrifice — pride in arguments, location in long-distance love — which has made her more comfortable with sacrifice herself. A host adds his own joke version: when called to sacrifice his pride, he likes to 'walk it up the mountain and say, just send the ram, Lord.'
More on Forgiveness
-
Dear LFTP: the $4,200 loan that never came back
- How do I get past the sadness over the $4,200 loan my friend never repaid — do I just let it go?
The final Dear LFTP letter: a year ago a supposed friend asked to borrow money — her husband had left the country to renew his visa, her car was repossessed, she had no way to get to work.
From No. 603 · Found Out
-
Dear LFTP: the stolen college fund and telling the 90-year-olds
- Should I tell my 90-year-old parents that their grandson stole my granddaughter's college fund?
Ben hands to Mike, who reads a grandmother's letter: her son helped himself to the college money the great-grandparents set aside for her granddaughter; she fears telling her parents, in their nineties, could shock them into a stroke.
From No. 586 · Nothing Personal
-
Dear LFTP: forty years of a cheating wife and a temptation
- Would it be wrong to rekindle an old friendship for intimacy when my wife has cheated for forty years?
A man approaching his fortieth anniversary writes that his wife has always been a serial cheater, a secret he kept to protect the children's view of her; with retirement and a sexless marriage he asks whether rekindling things with old female friends would be wrong.
From No. 581 · Silly Rabbit | Christianity, Culture, and Navigating Social Expectations
-
Dear LFTP: the stalker ex-girlfriend
- How do I get my stalker ex-girlfriend to leave me alone?
Mike reads a letter from a man whose ex-girlfriend keeps trying to get him back, even stalking him, after he blocked her number.