The demand for voice over actors has skyrocketed with the growing desire for diverse dialects and accents. With this in mind, many voice actors have begun sharpening their skills to beat out the competition.

This guide outlines five extremely helpful voice acting tips to help enhance your skills and boost your recognition within the industry. 

1. Play With Your Voice

Practicing voice exercises helps build a loving relationship between you and your voice. As you learn to control your voice and own it you will gain confidence in yourself and enjoy speaking more often. 

As a whole, this tip is a huge part of voice acting training as it demonstrates boldness to employers and gives you confidence in yourself. 

2. Relax

The key to voice acting practice is to physically relax when experimenting with different accents and dialects. A clenched jaw or tight throat can hurt your voice over capabilities by straining your voice. 

One tip, offered by the great voice acting coach Morgan Freeman, is to yawn a lot before starting a speech. He also notes that your posture plays a large part in how your voice sounds to others. For this, be sure to have your shoulders back and chest lifted. 

3. Read Out Loud

As a voice actor, you should continuously practice the skill of reading out loud. Reading out loud helps you catch mistakes and overall makes your speech more fluid.

Also, reading out loud will eventually make your scripts a lot easier to read. Reading newspapers, books, social media posts or magazines are all great resources to enhance the fluidity of your script reading skills. 

4. Try Paraphrasing 

The best voice actor can dissect dialogue and get to the heart of the script. You are the voice of the story and with that comes the massive responsibility of focusing on the key points of the copy writer's dialogue. 

The best way to understand the message is by paraphrasing. Some questions and methods to help you paraphrase large amounts of text include: 

• Determining the main objective 
• Determining what the writer wants to say
• Say the script in your own words

Repeat this process until you can effectively communicate the message out loud in your own words. Paraphrasing, although sometimes frustrating to master, is a rewarding skill to have when standing out amongst other voice talents. 

5. Experiment With Lead-Ins

Employers can decide whether or not they like your work after hearing the first sentence. For this reason, you need to nail the opening when recording your work.

A simple way to achieve this is lead-ins.

Lead-ins are phrases you say before beginning your script. They allow you to warm up and get into the vibe of the voice you are trying to portray. For example, if you're reading a more sassy script, try leading-in with the phrase 'Look...'.

The fact is nothing can make your voice sound perfect on the first shot- even if you're using the best microphone for voice acting. 

With that being said, continuous practice of lead-ins is your best bet at helping you get there.

Practicing Voice Acting Tips

Developing your voice over skills is a lifelong journey. With the help of these voice acting tips and your dedication to the profession, you're sure to land gigs in no time.