Read: Goodbye... For Now
I wanted to give some of the most important debate lessons I learned before I go.
I've been involved in dozens of IRL debate tournaments, both in-person and virtual. I've been doing IRL debating for 4 years. I was the president of debate club at my highschool before I graduated. I have ranked among the best speakers in my province and several times have performed better than any other team in Peel region in tournaments. I say this not to brag, but rather to establish that I know what I'm talking about.
- Speeches should be 10-20% fluff and 80-90% stuff. Fluff is anything that aims to elicit an emotional reaction or summarize/introduce/roadmap/make things easier to understand; anything that does not directly add on to your arguments. If you're debating to win, framing the debate in a way that leads to people thinking you represent the moral position or summarizing things so people can easier understand/conceptualize what you mean (ESPECIALLY when looking back on your speech to vote), fluff will often be how voters/the judge will remember the debate and can easily win you the whole thing.
- Roadmap and summarize. Segment the debate as much as possible. Do not try and intertwine one point or one rebuttal with another (though your rebuttals also contributing to your arguments is fine). Knowing exactly what you are saying is INCREDIBLY important. You don't want to lose because a voter didn't understand what you were trying to say. Where possible, summarize every argument or rebuttal with logical premises that inevitably lead to a conclusion. What comes before that summary should be proving each of those premises and how they inevitably lead to the conclusion.
- During rebuttals, take your opponent's argument in its best case. You do not want to leave ambiguity where the judge can think "well, I can imagine a scenario where this argument might be able to stand up to these refutations better, so perhaps this refutation does not stand up if you took the argument in good faith." Taking your opponent's argument in its best case is advice I got repeatedly (mostly because I was bad at following it lmao). Show how, even in the absolute best case scenario with the kindest possible assumptions, the argument is still incorrect and does not outweigh your arguments. Then go on to say that "if their argument fails in the best case scenario with the kindest possible assumptions, in a realistic scenario, the argument completely and utterly falls apart."
- Don't be too harsh. That last sentence in the previous bullet point is probably not how you should do it, but it's how I'd do it. Being too harsh just makes people view your entire argument with a negative light. It makes you out to be an asshole. Take people in good faith unless you are absolutely sure and capable of proving that their argument is in bad faith/laughably incorrect. This is also advice I should have followed more.
- Mechanisms. Basically, when you say one thing will lead to another thing, how? That is what a mechanism is. You have to provide that logical bridge or else it is impossible to prove that a cause-effect relationship will occur.
- Go through every debate as though it is of personal relevance to you. Treat every speech with the conviction and certainty you would treat it if you were falsely accused of murder and were speaking to the jury if there was no chance you could lose and now all you have to do is bring it home. To speak fluidly, with passion, and with full belief in your arguments will win debates more than anything. It's like fluff if it was intertwined throughout the entire speech. Speaking in a poetic, assured tone psychologically leads to people thinking you know what you're talking about and it sticks with them a lot more than a monotonous series of quotes and bullet points.
