Actors are like water and the characters they play are like containers of different shapes and sizes. They take the shape of the container they are poured into. Establishing yourself as an actor takes practice, talent, and luck thrown into the mix. It takes a lot of time and effort to be the actor you wish to be. You would have to go through countless auditions, improve your skills and expand your horizons.

Here are a few steps you can take to prepare that thespian in you:

• Improve your memory

If you work on improving your memory, you can remember your lines better. Begin with short sections of dialogues that have emotional heft to it. Practice the delivery of the lines repeatedly to master it. You can also have some physical cues attached to the dialogue like a movement of your hand or head so that you remember them better. Exercising regularly and having an omega-3-rich diet will help you with improving your memory.

• Work on your voice

All your audience is not seated at the first row so work on projecting your voice. It doesn’t mean you have to scream your dialogue, you just have to learn to increase the volume of your voice. Enunciate your words with clarity and loudness. You have to stay away from alcohol, cigarettes, and anything that robs your vocal cords of hydration. But you have to be careful about where you project your voice. Breathe from your diaphragm to reach the level of volume and depth you require.

• Learn new dialects

Suppose you get an opportunity to play a great character that strikes a chord with you but has an accent. You do not want to let go of a chance like that. Learn a wide variety of dialects and increase your versatility as an actor. Watch videos on streaming platforms where people speak your desired dialect and see how they articulate a particular word by mouth movements. Another great way to learn a new dialect is if you know a native speaker who can coach you. If not, you can always opt for a dialect coach.

• Pump emotion into your role

Understand the main emotion of your character in a scene and try to convey it into through your performance. For example, if your character is happy then you’d have to perform animatedly with hand gestures. Once you nail the emotion charge of the scene, it would become a mental cue for dialogues.

• Improve your stage skills

When you practice emoting with your entire face and using gestures so the audience will understand what your character is going through. Working on other skills like dancing, singing and stage combat will increase your marketability. Knowing stage combat can open up a whole avenue of acting roles in plays and musicals. The more skills you have, the more likely you land good roles. And if you learn a skill that most other actor doesn’t have, it will make you stand out of the crowd.

• Enroll yourself in acting school

It is not a compulsory step in preparing yourself for acting but acting school can expose you to your contemporaries and you can absorb a million things which you otherwise wouldn’t. You can gain contacts, a network of colleagues, and build your resume. Your teachers will be experts in the industry and will keep pushing your limits.

These points are just the tip of the iceberg and you will eventually know how to delve deep and find out methods that work for you when you get proper guidance from experts.