How much to write out for the round?
An interesting question has come up around camp CalBap this week. How much do we want to write on our debate briefs? How much outside of the evidence, cites and tag lines? There are two schools of thought on this.
One says that you should put in lots of transitional statements like, “My next argument is…” because these help the speech flow more effectively. You can also put in overviews on your Disadvantages, which simultaneously helps the judge know the “whole story” of the D/A and allows the debater to remember that story quickly in prep time. Some teams will have a case author quotation or philosophy at the top of their 1AC, and some will even have the famous “insert impact here” (which we’ve all heard read aloud in at least one novice round).
Another school of thought says that the evidence should stand alone, be compartmentalized, and left up to the debaters to organize in the round. Sometimes teams will leave blanks next to each tag line so that the debaters can quickly number them in prep time to keep their refutation extra-organized.
One obvious problem with writing out lots of extra comments and transitions is that the speech may be less conversational. The advantage is that novice debaters have less effective delivery anyway, so at least the speech itself will make more sense.
My philosophy is this. I write out lots of transitions, comments (things like “Don’t run this with argument X, because they contradict), etc. I do this for the novice debaters as a model, and to help them relieve stress in the round. I expect my experienced debaters to ignore, modify, or even mark out these sections and be able to pull cards out from random places and use them at will. Just my take.
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.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.