One of the most notable lecturers
in Harvard University prepares his lectures in a way which is an
excellent model for debaters. He writes out beforehand a complete
analytical and tabulated plan of his lecture, similar to the briefs
which have been recommended here in Chapter II, with each of the main
principles of his lecture, and with the subdivisions and illustrations
inserted. Then he leaves this outline at home and talks from a full and
well-ordered mind. Some such plan is the best possible one for the main
speeches in a debate. Often the plan can be most easily prepared by
writing out the argument in full; and this expansion of the argument has
the added advantage of providing you with much of your phrasing. But it
is better not to commit the complete argument to memory: the brief of
it, if thoroughly digested and so studied as to come readily to mind, is
enough. Then practice, practice, practice, will give the ease and
fluency that you need.
The rebuttal should always be extemporaneous. Even if you have foreseen
the strongest points made by your opponent and prepared yourself to meet
them, you cannot foresee just the way he will make the points. Nothing
is more awkward in a debate than to begin with a few obviously
extemporaneous remarks, and then to let loose a little speech which has
been kept, as it were, in cold storage, and which just misses fitting
the speech to which it should be an answer.
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