Gotta Write

I get pretty involved with the characters in my book.  Sometimes when I’m writing a tense scene, I’ll feel tense.  When I write a sad scene, I feel sad.

Don’t even get me started on how many times I’ve written something that I thought was clever and then giggled to myself.

The other day I wrote a scene where the main character has a mini-breakdown, and the scene ends with her leaving her husband.  It was an obvious direction for the story to take, but the whole section was just really emotional.  I actually started to feel a little choked up when I was typing it.  I told myself, “Hey Goober, you made up these characters.  What are you getting so emotional about?”

Luckily I had one reader admit to me that the scene made her cry too, so I feel a little better about my own reaction.  It got me wondering, though: How many other storytellers start to feel emotionally attached to their characters?

My guess is that this is fairly common, but somebody needs to tell me now if this isn’t normal and there is a way to avoid getting too attached.