 This is going to be controversial, but I don't think I would have enjoyed attending Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. I get it, it's literally a magical place full of whimsy and nostalgia. That said, I have some major issues. Putting aside that they are literally training children to be weapons of mass destruction, there are some pretty serious instructional issues here. For me, the one that always stood out was the use of quills and scrolls. I get it, it fits into the aesthetic, but seriously, how has a society as innovative as this one managed to ignore the need for a ballpoint pen? In competitive debate, pens are pretty important. This is because, regardless of the format, competitors and their judges need to keep a written record of the arguments made in round. We call this systematic way of recording arguments flowing. Today we will cover the process of flowing debates. We'll first discuss some of the reasons why we flow debates, then bust out our pens and walk through the step-by-step process of getting it done. Then finally, talk about some tips and tricks to get better. Why we Flow Debates In order to keep your speeches clearly organized and ensure that one does not miss any of their opponent's arguments, a debater must have an exceedingly accurate record of the speeches that have presented in round. In part, this is due to the principle of refutation. In a debate, every argument is important. To help ensure that there is clash on key ideas, debaters are required to respond to each other's arguments. This always needs to happen during the next speech that you're able to do so. If a debater fails to answer an argument their opponent made, it means that they have dropped that argument. In debate, dropping an argument means to concede an opponent's argument by not answering it. You also can drop and therefore concede your own arguments if you fail to extend them during your next speech. For these reasons, having a clear and comprehensive record of the round ensures that you do not lose the round by missing key arguments of your opponents or forgetting to extend your own points. Beyond that, flowing is also critical to refuting the arguments of your opponents. A record of what has been said lets you systematically attack your opponent line by line. Debating line by line means responding systematically to the other team's arguments one by one in the order that they were made. This is only possible if you have a flow of what they said. In practice, debaters using the line by line technique will tell the judge which claim they are answering and with every argument they make. For example, a negative team responding to an affirmative advantage might say something like this. Let's go to their first advantage. On their first uniqueness points, they claim that, and then briefly summarize their argument, my answer is, briefly summarize your argument, next on to their link, briefly summarize their argument, my answer is, briefly summarize your argument. This would continue for the rest of the arguments the affirmative made. Doing the line by line creates a wall of ink on the flow. In order for an affirmative team to rescue their advantage, they must spend time in their next speech to refute all of these points. Failing to do so will allow you to point out that they dropped your argument when it's your turn to speak next. This often means that you are able to defeat key arguments your opponent made and in the case of the affirmative's advantage, this means they lose the ability to win. Now that you're starting to get an idea of how important flowing is, let's explain how the heck you do it. How to flow debates. Every time I teach flowing, I have at least one student claim that they have a method of taking notes that is equally effective and works better for them. Experience suggests that all of these students will be wrong. Even if you manage to develop an equally effective method of taking notes, it would be of little use because your teammates, opponents, coaches, and judges would not be using that method and would have difficulty making sense of your rounds. With that in mind, let's dive into the process. First, you need to gather the basic supplies. In order to flow effectively, you need two things. A set of multicolored pens and some blank, unlined paper. I'll point out that there is a lot of debate about the types and sizes of pens and paper. My recommendation is to have a set of pens that contrast well with each other, like red and black, and to use blank legal sized paper. Other pen colors and standard copy paper also works, but you will benefit from the contrasting colors and larger spaces to prep out your arguments. You should avoid flowing debates in a single color or with a pencil. You also never want to flow on lined paper or paper that has hole punches in it. In a typical debate round, you can expect to use three to seven sheets of paper. Rarely you may use more than that. Great. Now that you have your supplies, let's talk about setting up the flow. First, let's start by orienting your flow vertically. This is also sometimes called portrait orientation when using a computer. You should never situate your flow horizontally as it will not leave you enough space. Next, begin dividing each of your sheets of paper up into columns. You want to have one column for each speech in the debate, not including cross-examination. In Lincoln Douglas and IPDA style debate, you would want to have five columns. In parliamentary, six, teen policy debate calls for eight. When you are new, it's helpful to fold the sheets up to create these spaces. In a typical debate round, you will hear a variety of on-case and off-case arguments. Depending on the type of debate resolution and format, it can vary some, but generally it is pretty obvious what the main arguments are of the round. For your typical policy case, you can expect that the affirmative will have a top-of-case, which includes framework arguments, their plan, and perhaps some solvency. They will also provide two to three advantages supporting their plan. In response, the negative will read a combination of disadvantages, procedural arguments, and occasionally a counterplan. You should allocate a separate sheet of paper to each of these arguments, meaning the top-of-case gets a sheet, each advantage gets a sheet, and each disadvantage, procedural or counterplan gets a sheet. In fact, in value-based debates, you will see a similar setup, but the affirmative will follow their framework arguments with a series of contentions, and the negative will typically respond with counter-contentions and procedural argumentation. Just like with policy topics, the top-of-case gets its own sheet of paper, and each contention and counter-contention gets its own sheet of paper. There are two main reasons why we flow arguments like this. First is that arguments tend to expand exponentially as debates go on. This means that while you might have a single point of uniqueness and your first advantage, it's possible that the negative team will make two responses there. When it's your turn to speak again, you may have multiple responses to their responses, and so on. Using multiple sheets lets you space out your argument so that you have plenty of room to lay out the arguments that were made. The second reason to use multiple sheets is that debaters will often reorganize the debate as the speeches advance. For example, during the first affirmative constructive, you may flow in the order of top-of-case, advantage one, and advantage two. Then, in the first negative constructive, you may be given a roadmap to flow in the order of disadvantage one, top-of-case, advantage one, and advantage two. Become the next affirmative speech, the affirmative may choose to go advantage one, disadvantage one, top-of-case, advantage two. By having each of these arguments on different sheets of paper makes it much easier to organize them in the robed mapped order before the time starts and follow along as the debater works their way through the arguments. When the debate begins, start with your first sheet of paper. As the speech unfolds, you will want to write each distinct argument in order from top to bottom in the leftmost column of the page. I find numbering arguments to be a useful strategy if your opponent is not providing an outline format for you. Alternately labeling common argument structures works too. For example, uniqueness, link, internal link, and impact. Keep in mind that you are just trying to get the gist of what these arguments are about. It's not possible or feasible to write down every word. If you can summarize a claim to three or four words, you will find it easier to keep up. Below the claims you summarize, do the same for any warrants read. Keeping track of citations is also helpful when it comes time to refer back and attack it. As the debater finishes, each major argument moves on to additional sheets, still flowing in the leftmost column. After the first speech, there may be a period of cross-examination, crossfire, or flex. These periods are typically not flowed, but if you get an idea of an argument you want to make, write yourself a note to do so. When the negative gets ready to begin, they should start with a roadmap. This tells you the order they plan to go. If it seems like they're going to start without one, politely ask them if you could get the order before they begin their speech. This lets you put your sheets of paper in order. Note, they may not tell you specifically what kind of arguments they plan to run, but they will say something like, it'll be three off, and then case and order. This means you'll want three new sheets of paper on top, and then the sheets of paper in the same order that they were presented in the first affirmative speech. You may also get opponents who are more upfront and say something like, it's going to be topicality, disadvantage one, disadvantage two, top of case, advantage one, and advantage two. The results is the same here. Three new off-case arguments, and then the case and order. Using a different color pen, flow the off-case arguments the same way you did the on-case arguments during the first speech. When they get to the on-case arguments and start responding directly to those arguments from the 1ac, line up their responses immediately next to the arguments that they answer. This is the part of flowing that makes it easy to visualize and respond to arguments in the debate. In the third speech of the debate, you will flow the arguments of the affirmative in the third column. When they refute the 1 and C arguments, directly align their arguments next to the ones that they are refuting. Each new argument goes in a fresh row. If they point out any arguments from the 1ac and the 1 and C did not answer, draw an arrow from where that argument is written on the 1ac's column to the same row of the 2ac's column. You will continue this process for each speech of the debate, going to the next column and lining up the arguments next to the argument they answer. When you get to the rebuttals, you should be flowing in the last two columns. Since new arguments are not allowed in rebuttals, all of the negative arguments should line up with arguments from the previous affirmative speech. If the negative does make new arguments in their rebuttal, you should note that with a star or some other indication that they are new and should not be allowed. In some forms of debate, like American Parley, it is the responsibility of the debaters to flag the new arguments their opponents make to the judge. In other forms of the debate, particularly if your speech time is pressed, there is an expectation that judges will flag new arguments in the rebuttals and protect the flow by not considering any new points that have been made. This is particularly important during the affirmative rebuttal, as the negative does not get a final chance to call out any new arguments once the debate is done. Now that you have an idea how flowing works, let's finish off with a few important tips and tricks. Tips and tricks! Keep in mind that flowing is hard at first. You will need to fight through the desire to stop if the debate gets hard to keep up with. Here are a few suggestions to make the process easier for you and the people you debate with. First, when debating, make sure to roadmap and signpost. Roadmapping tells us the general order of where you're going before the speech starts. Signposting tells us where you are at on the flow and which parts of the arguments you are responding to. The more organized you are and specific you are, the easier it will be to flow. Second, develop a shorthand. Try to come up with some common symbols and abbreviations that make it easier for you. Also, there are going to be times when you hear words and terms in the debate that are too long to flow. Using acronyms or the first few letters may be enough to do the trick. Third, never give up and stop. If you miss an argument, leave some room to fill it in later and keep going. Stopping and trying to figure it out will only get you further behind. Remember, you can ask your opponents to repeat points and cross examination. Fourth, label your arguments. This may seem obvious, but when you use lots of sheets of paper, things can get confusing. Writing some labels like top A1, A2, DA1, DA2 in the top corners of each sheet makes it easier for you to keep track of and round. Fifth, pre-flow your first speech. You know what you're going to say here. Having your arguments written down means that you don't have to try to fill in the blanks when your opponent starts refuting you. Sixth, if you're left-handed, it may be easier to flow your debates backwards, starting at the right most column. This will keep you from covering up the arguments you're trying to write responses to. It will also minimally cut down the amount of ink you end up smearing on the side of your hand. Last, practice. Like a lot. The best way to learn how to flow is by doing it. From this point on, you should flow every round that you see, regardless if you are a participant or observer. The more you practice flowing, the quicker you get good at it. Remember, you can always pull up videos of debates on YouTube to practice on your own time. It can also be a fun exercise to put on a fast song and see if you can keep up with the lyrics. Today, we covered the process of flowing debates. We went over the reasons why you should flow debates, the process of actually doing it, and some tips to make it easier. I guess I'm not cut out for the wizardly world for a variety of reasons. Chief amongst them is, I like my Pilot G2's a bit too much. That said, if you do get that letter to Hogwarts, at least what's-her-name's torture pen does not actually have to be constantly dipped in ink. Thanks for watching. This video series is written and produced by me, Ryan Guy, with the help of a wide variety of scholarly research and open educational resources. For more information on the references and material used, see the description page on YouTube. This video is published under a Creative Commons license. Please feel free to share, use, and remix its content.