Emotions are temporal and usually temporary states that flow out of a character's in response to what happened, what is happening and what will happen. How much they are expressed (emotional control) and how appropriate they are, is an aspect of attitude. Emotions can come on fast, and leave just as fast.

Consider this example, for three characters: they each find out that something terrible has happened. One shows anger, another collapses into total despair, and the third asks for more details.

The ability to convey emotion in your voice is especially important in dialogue. Dialogue is not natural speech, and emotions expressed in dialogue are not natural either. A common fault of amateur recordings it to under-do emotions. Without expression of emotion, your characters will come off as flat, one-dimensional. Your listener knows its a story. Don't worry about sounding melodramatic. So, exaggerate your characters emotions, contrast them, breath some life into them.

For exercises, use your selection that contains dialogue. Pick two emotions from the list below. Pretend that for reasons unknown, Character A comes into the dialogue with the first emotion you picked, and that Character B comes into it with the second emotion you picked. Record it. Now switch them, giving each the emotion the other had. Record it again. When done, listen to your recordings.

The number and description of emotions are limitless. Here are just a few, but add any you want to this list:

• appreciative
• happy
• sad
• depressed
• excited
• tense
• afraid
• angry
• worried