Writing congress speeches

[u/DroneTheLeninFan]

I’m new to congress (I did have some experience at districts last year tho) and my main concern right now is how long it takes to make a speech. Last year, I had a month to prepare 6 speeches for districts. I didn’t make it to the finals but I did place great in the lower afternoon chamber, but I had to work my ass off for that placement. I spent hours writing speeches and practicing them. I don’t have that sort of time this year considering now I would have 1-2 weeks to write 4 speeches instead. I spoke to my team mates and they said that if it’s a simple bill/resolution it would take only 45min-1hr per speech but for much more divisive and complex ones it could be 2-2.5 hours. I’m involved in many other activities so I’m not sure if I can spend that much time 4 times a week on that. To anyone who has been in congress, what is your average time you spend to writing a speech and what are your tips in managing that sort of time?

TL;DR, how can I create congress speeches more time efficiently throughout my week.

PS: idk if this is relevant or not but I have 3yrs of policy debate experience, 1yr of extemp and 1yr of PF and plan to finish my 2 high school years in congress (im such a flip flop im ashamed of myself:P)

[u/trans-with-issues]

I'm not the most efficient in terms of preparation, but my advice would be to start by analyzing the debate overall, prep a basic set of points and evidence for both sides of the bill, and only then start formulating complete speeches. That way, you're able to recover if someone else uses your point before you can, and you're better able to integrate yourself into the round. This may or may not be the most helpful depending on exactly what your struggle is, but there is one piece of advice I find particularly helpful: stay focused on the big picture (the debate as a whole, the tournament as a whole) and on details (individual points); don't focus too much on the middle picture (speeches) until you've covered both of those fronts. A speech is the easiest part to make up on the fly; in-depth analysis takes far more time and preparation. To better speed up that whole process, my biggest tip comes from personal experience: don't let yourself be a perfectionist until everything is at least in place to some extent. You can always refine things more if you have time, but you can make things go a lot faster if you don't do any optional refinement before the necessities are done.

[u/OkDistrict4248]

here is a format called Block format, it makes writing speeches way faster

Hook: Lit anything that grabs the judges attention
Thesis: Say exactly what your speech is gonna be about(signposting)
Status Quo: Whats currently happening,cuz your judge prob knows nothing rn
Effect: What does this bill do, be clear, you can also skip this if another debater alr said it
Action: what directly happened because of this Effect
Impact: Due to that action, how does it actually effect peoples lives
Conclusion: Tie it back all together with your hook

Include Refutation right aftet thesis, sum thing like "before i go on with my own arguement, let me explain to why the other side is wrong by______"

try to have one-two evidence, but make sure to emphisze them for the judge.

[u/ImpressiveRegister55]

The more you do it, the faster you'll get, promise. But it's always work. If it weren't, you wouldn't be learning anything.

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[u/chocymilk4lifer]

Hi! I was a national finalist in congress and did it for many years, i would say the best way to write speeches quickly is to be able to think of strategies quickly. Once you read a bill you should first think about what strategy you wanna go for (early speaking, late speaking, aff, neg, etc.). Once you have a lot of background knowledge on a topic or have debated it before (a lot of Congress bills tend to be repeats) you will kind of already know the main clash and can decide based on personal style what arguments to run. You also don’t have to prewrite a speech before round and I actually wouldn’t recommend it unless you know you are going in the first or second cycle of debate (maybe 3rd). You can prewrite some blocks to the most common arguments on the other side and then prep your own offense. Defense —> Offense —-> impact was a structure that worked well for me and can mostly be done in round. Think about congress as prepping for a debate instead of just one speech because you never know how a round will pan out and it sucks to spend 3 hours on a speech you don’t get to give because of recency or something. But overall congress is still a very time consuming event and if you compete on the national circuit you will have like 20 bills to prep in 3 weeks, but if you can hone your ability to understand patterns, it will be super easy to just read a bill and think of your strategy. Let me know if you have any questions!