Writing a Case, pt 1 of 5, overview
I thought it might be helpful to illustrate the case writing process. Over the next five posts I will be writing a case on solar power satellites – a interesting and fun case on this year’s topic. I’ll go over my research process, card cutting tricks, and case construction. These are the four steps to follow when writing a case:
- Research – find everything you can on the topic (even really old stuff). Keep any articles that you would use on the negative for this case – you might have it run against you!
- Read everything – bracket important sections, write one line summaries in the margin, and categorize where the card would go (inherency, solvency, harms, etc).
- Cut the articles pasting each important section into a different microsoft word file for each category (harms, inherency, solvency, advantage, answers). Use outlining to assign the tag level 1 so a table of contents will be automatically generated.
- Select the cards you want to use for your case and paste that into a new word file for your case. Add comments, underline key sections. Finally, collect the remaining cards and organize them into an “answers” section that you can use for your 1AR & 2AR. Additionally, organize the negative file (you did get negative research as well right?)
Check back every few days for the next part on the series. Also, feel free to leave comments for any suggestions!
-Danny
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a Reply