Tips on Writing an Affirmative – Part 2

Posted by Mike

September 24, 2007

I would like to follow up John Boyer’s great post with one that approaches the same problem from a different point of view. From a competitor’s standpoint, how do you find affirmatives that will win? Here are some ideas:

1) Pick the moral high ground – Don’t be afraid to write affirmatives that will cost lots of money and risk a depression. Choose affirmatives that will save lives (especially young lives!), solve for some sort of obvious moral evil, and will make the world a better place. If the judge has to decide between lives and money, you will win most of the time.

2) Lean to the left – Most of your judges are college professors or at least college educated, meaning they are most likely liberal in their politics (This doesn’t apply if I’m judging you, ironically). Choose affirmative cases that are liberal in their focus (e.g. taking tax money from the rich will solve the problem), and don’t be afraid to use lots of liberal buzzwords in your case (e.g. “faith tradition” rather than “religion”, multilateral approach, constructive engagement, etc.). Remember that there only two kinds of interventionists, those that admit it, and those that don’t.

3) Simpler is better – Some of your judges will only hear your new and interesting case once, which means they only get one chance to understand it. If your case depends on complex economic models, or is difficult to clearly explain in cross-ex, dump it.

4) A “visual” case is more exciting – Cases that not only are simple, but can create an attractive visual picture in the judge’s mind are more effective. For example, CBU ran a case last year on Hydrogen cars that included a couple of descriptions of a new BMW hydrogen car. This creates an appealing image in the judge’s mind, which can’t be created by a case that is more technical or conceptual in nature.

5) Choose a “safe” case and an “elim round” case. Make sure that 90% of your work goes into the “safe” case, but remember that you will sometimes go into an elim round to face an opponent that has either beaten your affirmative before, or at least is very well prepped against it. The best “elim round” cases are ones that make perfect sense, and are very unique. There may be lots of evidence against the case, so at tournament after tournament it would never hold up, but as a one-shot-deal it may work. An example I used several years ago was a case that advocated an outright U.S. invasion of Cambodia. Every neg that year was ready to give a “your case may lead to war” argument, but was not prepared to argue something so obvious as the disadvantages to an invasion.

Keep in mind, these tips are not for coaches attempting to maximize the pedagogical opportunities for debate, but for L/Ders looking to write an effective case.

Mike Marse
California Baptist University

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