Personal recommendation from Dan O'Day:

Two full hours, being coached in voice over
performance and commercial copywriting by The
Famous Radio Ranch's Christine Coyle. With
help from none other than Dick Orkin. What more
could a voice actor or radio advertising
professional want?

Click the “play” button below to hear Christine Coyle explain
the importance of creating your own backstory.

ere is the secret known by the world’s most accomplished, most successful voice over artists. It’s the key that allows this very small
minority of voice performers to capture the vast majority of the best work.

Knowing, understanding, and being able to apply this secret is more
valuable to them than their own voices, professional contacts, and
résumés.

You see, almost everyone who auditions for a commercial
automatically assumes the commercial begins with the first line of
copy. But they’re wrong.

Here's the secret:

Effective commercials begin with the character,
not the copy.

In order to create a character the audience can relate to (a
necessary requirement if you want those characters to sell to your
audience), the performer must have a sense of what brought that
character to the very point where your copy begins.

To achieve this understanding, the performer needs to be able to
answer three questions:

What is the character’s inner need?

What does the character want?

Why is the character doing what he or she is doing?

Before we explore this further, let me hasten to add:

You don’t have to look very far to find someone who will laugh at
what I just told you.

Your own market is filled with voiceover people who will tell you,
“Rubbish! You just go in, read the copy, collect your check, and go
home.”

These are the journeymen and the wannabees and the never-were.
The ones for whom voiceover work is, at best, a badly paying hobby.

But the people who make extraordinarily good livings as voice actors ...
Who enjoy the exceptional pleasure of being able to pick and
choose among the projects offered them...Who routinely find
themselves working with only the very best writers, producers and performers....

The truly successful voice actors already grasp the importance of understanding the characters they portray.

Once you can answer those three questions, you possess the
building blocks of a differentiated, stand-out performance.

Have you ever considered the importance of differentiation in your
career? Differentiation refers to the unique quality that sets you apart
as a performer or as a writer. The unique quality that defines your
career.

And what sets you apart cannot simply be your voice. Anybody’s
voice can be mimicked, imitated and even duplicated by others.

But the voice over people who make it to the top of the business are
voice actors; they have the ability to take a 30-second script and
make the character real.

The world is overflowing with people who can “read lines,” but there
always is room for the rare performer who can transform words on
paper into genuine, human experience.

Christine Coyle is the world’s most successful director of radio
commercials. For two magical hours, you’ll hear professional voice
actors and copywriters work right alongside Christine to discover the
hidden magic in everyday commercials.

There is so much more material than the actual word on the
page, and you will learn how to access that material in your own
work...Always.