[Will-Reierson]

Your diction is good. You do get hung up in a couple of places (on “to free patients to live better lives” and the pause between “for more than a decade” and “Acclerant”) but overall you’re solid.

You’ve got some serious plosives going on with your P’s so make sure that you’re recording slightly off-axis from the microphone to avoid those.

“Conversational” is something that I feel a lot of people (particularly people doing the hiring) don’t understand. “Conversational” means having a conversation. If I ask you “what’s in your living room?” you’re not going to give me a perfectly delivered pat answer. You’re going to have to think about it. You’re going to pause in weird places to breathe, skip commas, ignore periods, say “uh” and “um”, speed up and slow down depending on how fully formed your thoughts are. What you’re NOT going to say is “I’ve got a couch and a side table, as well as a rug and a coffee table. The TV sits on a black TV stand which sits to the left of the bay window.” People say conversational and think it means “casual”. As far as I’m concerned, those are two drastically different things. Casual means relaxed and not up-tight, conversational means you’re having a real conversation with someone.

I’m guessing when you say conversational you’re thinking “casual”. Casualness can be conveyed by speed (the faster the delivery, the more “casual” it will sound) and by letting your enunciation slide a bit (blending words together in some places, saying “tuh” instead of “too”, “what’d” instead of “what did”, “fer” instead of “for”.

The biggest thing however that I feel almost everyone misses (including myself) is connection with the listener. Unless a script is expressly written as a speech, the unspoken intent is that you’re having a dialogue with the listener. You aren’t monologuing. Throughout the script, the listener is asking you unspoken questions and you are answering them. At the start of the “Accelerant” script, the listener could be saying “Man, I’m sick and tired of this sinusitis. It’s ruining my sleep, and my performance at work is dropping. I’m literally losing my mind.” Or perhaps it’s an ENT doctor and they’re saying “I’ve got a bunch of patients that are struggling with sinusitis so if you have any suggestions, I’m all ears.” Find the questions, the pleas for help, and answer them. Your reads will improve ten-fold if you can do this.

Keep it up!