Jeff Zentner signs student copies of “In the Wild Light”
Jeff Zentner is an award-winning author of four books. Two of his most familiar titles are “In the Wild Light” and “The Serpent King”.
Zentner came to Watauga High School on March 31 to meet with 9th graders who are currently reading “In the Wild Light”. He also led a dialogue workshop for those who were interested during FLEX.
During this workshop, students had the opportunity to gain knowledge on how professional authors go about creating dialogue in their novels and how to create a piece of dialogue that captures the audience’s attention.
“I used to be terrified to write dialogue,” said Zentner. “I told myself I didn’t want dialogue cluttering up my beautiful, poetic descriptions, and I thought the story worked better when the characters were not allowed to speak in their own story.”
Zentner eventually realized that strong dialogue would only enhance his descriptive writing.
“I was just afraid to write dialogue,” said Zentner. “I didn’t know how to make it sound organic, I didn’t know how to put it on the page and instead of getting better at it, I avoided it and hoped it would go away.”
Zentner covered multiple areas of dialogue including inferred dialogue, where speech can be inferred by the reader, and the emphasis on why the word "said" should be used multiple times throughout the writer’s dialogue.
“Dialogue is the way your readers hear your character’s voice,” said Zentner.
Zentner speaks to ninth graders about
“In the Wild Light”.
He was also adamant with workshop participants that they should avoid other words for "said," like "intoned" or "scoffed." The word "said" allows the dialogue to shine.
Participants felt excited when meeting Zentner. He offered to meet with each individual student and sign their copy of “In the Wild Light”.
“Seeing Jeff Zenter talk was such an awesome experience,” said Liliana Lemus, freshman. “Not only was he just an overall fun person to be around, but his workshop introduced helpful dialogue-writing methods that I'll definitely be using in the future.”
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