Exaggerations

By Eric Hunt

A great way to build your repertoire of character voices is to focus on real people and then exaggerate certain qualities. Many people claim that they do not have the ability to create character voices. Everyone has the ability to create character voices. Certainly, there are people out there who have a much greater capacity to do it then others but we all experience a wide array of characters everyday on which to draw during our creative process.

Perhaps you have a crotchety old aunt who’s rather off her rocker and who speaks with an ethereal nostalgia at family gatherings. Then when everyone least expects it, her tongue sharpens and out comes the screeching venom of 90 years of irritation, making her loosely fit dentures hiss and sputter. If you can imitate a third of that and commit to a few character-specifics, you’ve got a character that might give Tweety’s owner a run for her money!