Hey guys! I'm new to writing mysteries and am on my second mystery/inspirational short story and and I found myself getting this feeling like anxiety. Like I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was gonna happen next and it frightened me cause i had never felt this way and I have a feeling this is a normal feeling but i am not sure of it and need to know from other mystery writers if this comes with the territory or not. Forgive me if i sound naive but this my first rodeo with mystery writing. Thanks and have a great day!.
It's perfectly normal to feel anxiety when you're writing a genre that utilizes frightening scenarios. I write Gothic fiction, which engenders quite a lot of dread, and shadowy moods. I think that a writer who is incapable of "Feeling" their story will not be very good at writing it.
Same here, I always need to leave scary or emotional scenes for times when I have enough emotional bandwidth to properly deal with them. Some scenes I can write waiting for the bus, but not those.
It means you resonate with the setting, the scene and the characters. If your beta reader(s) feel something similar, it also means you successfully communicate all of those.
