I am Certain that if you are a novice debater you have had problems flowing. Flowing is crucial to winning ANY round in Lincoln Douglas Debate. Flowing is simply taking notes on the arguements presented on your case and your opponents case. If you are not listening that could cost you the round. When you are flowing you HAVE to stay up on your toes so you can be able to catch ludicrous arguments or find things your opponent drops in the round. Click the following links to be able to see what a flow looks like:
If you take a glance at those you can see that they are not very neat. Flows aren't meant to be. I was going to add neater ones to the site, but now that I am in college, I hardly have time for ANYTHING, but in the future I will probably put them on the page! Sorry :-(
When I first began to flow, I can honestly say....i was not very pleased with the results...I tried this funky horizontal thing, I was missing arguements, and losing rounds. I needed to know the better way to do it. I found one. I began to flow vertically, but I will be honest, that may not be for you. i will put a horizontal flow AND and vertical one, and you could sample them out to see which is the best for you.
You will learn the following mechanics of flowing:
Shorthand writing consists of a shorter way to write things so that you can fit imperative arguements to that legal pad. First things first, USE A $*^% LEGAL PAD!!!!!!!! It royally pisses me off to see novice debaters with these sheets of notebook paper floating around the stinking place like they dont know any BETTER!!!! (ok im going off on a tangent!!!!) Ok These are a few of the shorthand codes and be sure to incorporate them on your flow.
Justice=J
Equality is =
Unequal is = with a slash through it
Quality of life= QOL
Sanctity of Life= SOL
Not Justified= J with a slash through it
Safety=S with a circle around it
At=@
Contradiction= ><
My Opponent is an idiot that makes NO sense= ?
Affirmative=Aff.
Negative=Neg.
Value=V
Criteria=C
Contention=Con.
These are just a few. Ok so I didn't give you a plethora of them.....thats alright.....it kind of gives you a feel for it!
Debaters often have trouble with flowing because they try to fit everthing on that ONE little page. Guess what? That just DOESN'T cut it. It is better to use two pages because it makes you appear much more organized and I promise you, you will receive more arguments than you could ever think of writing. Let's look at the benfit of having two pages when you flow:
You have the opportunity to manuever through arguments that your opponent says
You have the benefit of actually not having to shuffle and try to locate your arguements on one page
You can actually know where you are and signpost correctly during your rebuttals
This is just more reason for you to flowing on both pages.
Now that that is over I am certain you are wondering HOW do you flow on two pages? Well this is how:
Lable one page Affirmative and the other page Negative.
You can use these pages to know which side you are in the debate
When you learn how to lable your arguements you will know more about WHERE to put your notes
Sounds simple enough.....let's move on to "How to Lable Your Arguements"
Labling arguements is something you either know how to do or you don't. I do not want to MAKE you adapt my style of writing your arguements, but I do want to give you helpful hints on how to do it. Here are a few tips for labling your arguements and your opponent's arguements.
Use two different color ink pens. I normally use red for my opponent and black for me. Use whatever you feel is relevent
Be sure to PRE-FLOW your case!!!! this is the only way to make sure your opponent catches ALL of your main points and arguements. If you fail to pre-flow, you fail to catch missed arguements.
Make sure that you write your opponents case on the opposite page in the far left margin. If you fail to do this you may miss arguements.
WRITE SMALL AS POSSIBLE!!! You want to squeeze in as much as you can to avoid missing anything
Sound simple enough? I hope so! I will at the bottom of the page you will get a chance to look at neat flows, and see all of these steps incorporated in them.
It is always good to put your CX questions on a new page in your legal pad. This way you will not jumble through arguements and speeches. Be sure to come up with some pre-made questions before you go into the case. if you do this, you will make the Debate round MUCH easier on yourself and make you appear MOST professional.
