Why is my camera clicking so slowly?

I have a Nikon D3100.It's been awesome, but today it started behaving strangely. It seems like the shutter speed is very slow. Even in bright light, it takes 1/2-1 seconds between the initial click and the slightly lower click. The shutter seems to be a lot louder than normal, also. However, the main camera screen displays a normal shutter speed of 1/50-1/100. The really weird thing is that the pictures come out fine--the camera doesn't seem to be taking a picture during the entire click. What is wrong and how can I fix it?

So do you understand the settings? Have you bothered to read your owner's manual? Do you know anything at all about how this camera operates? If you don't do some serious reading.

It actually sounds like there may be a mechanical problem inside the camera because they way you have explained it is basically saying it's taking the image that way it should be but you hear a louder click in the camera.

This may be due to the camera receiving a bit of a hard know or drop and because of that it has knocked something out of places or broken something to do with the shutter or the mirror, it may be a good idea just to take it to Nikon of a camera repair specialist just to get it checked out

You're in self-timer mode. Bring the shutter mode back to normal.