My "Sentence" Technique

I have a little trick I use when I voice act, and that's my "sentence technique". What I do is when I read a sentence, I find the most important word in that sentence, and then emphasize it when I read that word. This comes out very handy when I want the listener to notice what's important. Here's an excerpt from a 7-11 ad script:

You don’t even have dog biscuits hangin’ around!

Sometimes I'll even do 2 or 3 words to emphasize, depending on how long the sentence is. In the excerpt above, the word I found to emphasize was "dog", which seemed to bring out the irony in the script (the script was about not having any food in the house, so you go to 7-11). A lot of times the way you read it changes because of your personality, voice, expressions, etc. I've used this little trick a lot now, and learned from an early coach. Sometimes you'll even find your own special techniques that might work just for you. What I'd like to work on is using less saliva sounds and controlling my vocal fry. I think I'll do some research on that!