1AC Structures: What a 1AC Is For, Its Pieces, and the 3 Ways to Build It

Prefer to read? This is the written version of the video above.

Your 1AC is a story. You should expand on the world and give the context for an idea. Then zoom into a plan, a specific mandate that details how you understand change should occur. And lastly, zoom back out, showing exactly how the aftermath will show itself: what effects it's going to have on the world, and why the judge, the taxpayer, and America as a whole benefit.

I'm Mark Roose, head coach of Nile Debate. Today we're covering three things: why a 1AC exists and what it's for, the pieces that make up a 1AC and why they matter, and the common 1AC structures you should know so you can put them into practice and be a better debater. Let's get started.

What a 1AC is for

When you think about your first affirmative constructive, it is absolutely imperative that you know what it's for. We always start with our guiding principles.

The first thing to know is that you should be telling a story: one cohesive story that makes sense and shows the judge exactly what you want them to know. Getting deep into that is a more advanced idea, so today we'll stay on structure.

Here are the guiding principles of the structure of a 1AC. You need harms, a plan, and solvency. Every case needs to do that. It always needs to show a problem, a plan, and a solution. You can also think of the solution as the aftermath, because whatever you have there (solvency, advantages, justifications) is what happens after your plan. Every 1AC does these three things:

1. The problem. What's going on? What's the story? Where are we at in the world? What kind of policies are affecting things? What insecurities do people feel? What issues are we facing right now? Is there a lack? Do we have a dependency? Is there a need? What should we make the judge aware of, and be aware of ourselves?
2. The plan. What are we going to do about it? Plans range from hyper, hyper niche (give a few million dollars to one organization) all the way to instituting new departments, spending hundreds of billions of dollars, or cutting away entire departments. We've seen everything.
3. The aftermath. If you pass your plan, what happens? What gets solved? What gets better? How do things actually change, and why would we want this plan?

The aftermath can come in many forms, which we'll get to. But every 1AC needs to tell a story: a story about the world, a story about what you're going to do, and what that will mean for all of us.

So that's what a 1AC is for. It gives the judge the baseline of the debate. Set the ground: define the key terms, set up any necessary context, and show exactly what you're going to do and why the Aff team exists in this round.

The three pieces: before, plan, after

There are a lot of pieces in debate, but there are three key pieces to a 1AC, and they line up with those three ideas: before, the plan, and after.

Think of it as an hourglass. The before is the widest part, where you give the context and your why. Then you come in to the most specific point, the plan, and jump back out for the after.

Before the plan

Every 1AC should start with an opener. You can use a quote, an idea, a story you write yourself, or a story that already exists. Then you state the resolution, and then you have options. Before the plan, you can have:

• Definitions
• Facts
• Background points
• Harms
• Needs
• Observations (what some people call them)

Sometimes using a harm is good. But when you have something really important to convey, like a specific word that matters a lot to your case, wrap it into a background point instead: Background point 1: there's this policy that exists. Subpoint A: let me define exactly what that policy is.

• Facts: I don't really like using facts. There will be more on this when you write your 1AC, but what I'd tell you is: just make it a background point.
• Harms: harms are really great, a phenomenal way to go. I think we can do even better, which we'll get to in the structures.
• Needs: a very niche kind of case. Needs pair with results: if you use needs before the plan, you use results after it. Those synergize really well.
• Observations: I don't recommend these. "Observations" mean something entirely different from what they'd mean in your 1AC. Rely on background points and harms instead.

That's your first piece: explaining what's going on. Can you break down the world? Can you lay out the affirmative narrative: why we're talking about this today, setting up what we're going to do about it?

The plan's five clauses

The plan is huge. It's a big deal, and a lot goes into it. There are five clauses to a plan, and it's important that you have all of them:

1. Mandate. The specific thing you're going to change about the world. It lines up with exactly what you're going to do. It can be one sentence or a paragraph. Some students write a short sentence and put a paragraph under it that they don't read every time. That's okay, as long as it's in the 1AC you hand the other team and you're very explicit about what's in there. Word it very carefully. It defines exactly what you want to happen: you're the catalyst for the change that brings about the advantages in your case.
2. Timeline. Typically one year. You can specify immediately, 30 days, 60 days, the next fiscal year, however long you want.
3. Enforcement. You can list one agency, say the Department of Homeland Security. That's great. But I recommend every student write the agency you want, and then also "and any other necessary federal body." That means you can have Congress, the President, anybody: the State Department, the Department of Defense (it's the Department of War now), however it needs to happen. That way you're not constricted.
4. Funding. A lot of cases don't need funding. Then you can just say no funding is necessary, since the plan is purely legislative. If you need it, you can say all necessary funds will come from federal revenues, or you can specify your funding and handle it in the round.
5. Clarification. This has been missing from a lot of cases lately. I really encourage you to add it: a clause that says affirmative speeches may clarify. It saves you a lot of trouble and headache later, when the other team wants to stand up and tell you, and the judge, what your case means. You can say, "No, look at point 5 of our plan. I'll clarify this for you, and then we can argue about that. Let's not argue about something the negative team made up about our plan."

That's how the plan works. That's piece two.

After the plan: the aftermath

The third piece is what comes after the plan: the aftermath. It can look like solvency, advantages, justifications, or the results I mentioned earlier. I've even seen advocacy. Advocacy is cool.

This is where you show why the judge should vote for you. Why is your plan valid? Why should they pass it? This should be very aggressive. It should be pushy. It should drive judges to want to vote for you, and it should scare the negative team.

The goal here is to synthesize. You opened with the big picture. You explained in fine detail exactly what you're going to do about it. Now show how that's going to result in good for Americans, for the world, for people in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. Show how you'll help with this moral issue, or this economic issue, or this national security issue, or solve a problem for the future. You can talk about probability and magnitude. You can bring in a ton here and layer your analysis, with rhetoric that makes it seem crazy for a judge not to vote for you after hearing the aftermath.

Your plan should be so good that the judge thinks, “wow, I can't believe we haven't done this.”

Why hasn't Congress already passed this? Hopefully your biggest problem is explaining why we haven't done it before, not why we should do it today.

The three structures

Now that we know what a 1AC is for and its three pieces, let's look at the three structures.

1. Harms–Solvency (or Harms–Advantages)

The first and simplest structure is harms–solvency: your harms, then your plan, then solvency. It's an awesome structure, the most basic one, and I recommend everybody start here. Every case I ever wrote, I started here. If you can't clearly define a problem and how you're actually going to solve it in the long term, you don't have a valid strategy.

The immediate improvement on this is to replace solvency with advantages: harms, plan, advantages. That's version one, and it's very good because it's simple, clear, and easy.

2. Comparative Advantage

Version two is an adaptation: comparative advantage.

For contrast, here's what a full harms–advantages case looks like: opener, maybe a background point, harm one, harm two (with impacts), your plan, then advantage one and advantage two, each with subpoints A and B and an impact. These cases get built out with a lot of levels.

Comparative advantage is a speed strategy. It gets the judge to your plan without worrying so much about a harm, which immediately solves the must-prove problem. If it might be hard to prove a harm, don't run one. Just talk about the benefits you can bring and how you can make the world better: an opener, maybe a background point, your plan, then advantage one, advantage two, advantage three.

You get straight to it. You shoot straight for net benefits. Can we make the world better? Can we make your life as a judge better, my life as a taxpayer better? All of a sudden you have a great plan and a great case. It's a huge opportunity to make a lot of impact very quickly.

3. Justifications (my favorite)

The third structure is justifications, and it's my favorite. I'll tell you why.

Harms–advantages forces you to prove your harms. Comparative advantage doesn't have harms at all, and that may not be the best solution either, because you're only talking about benefits. What if there's a real problem you want to solve? With comparative advantage, there's nothing that shows the judge the problem is really a problem.

Justifications fixes that. The setup is very similar: opener, some background, your plan (again, get to it within two minutes), then J1, J2, J3. These can have subpoints A and B, and you should be impacting them. It's a full structure.

The thing about justifications is that they're not locked into being advantages. They're not just pros; they can be cons. Justification one: you should pass our plan because right now the system is losing $100 million. Justification two: if you pass our plan, we save 10,000 lives. If you need to argue that the status quo is so horrible we need to act, you can. If you need to argue the plan creates great benefits, you can do that too. You don't just have to argue benefits.

And you don't have to prove your harms the same way. You can say we're losing tons of money without necessarily quantifying it. It would be better if you could prove you're losing $100 million or more, but you aren't bound to it. So you get a lot more flexibility and leeway, and it just makes sense: you're running a plan and justifying your mandate, justifying what you're doing. That's what a justifications case means.

Those are the three structures, and they're fairly simple. My favorite is justifications because it works for every kind of case. In my five years of Team Policy, every case I ever found, justifications was the way I was able to build it. I dabbled in other versions sometimes, but justifications laid good groundwork, was understood by judges of every kind across the country, and gave me a lot of flexibility in how I argued. I could tell a very clear story without being locked into a harm, a need, or a result. It was all just reasons. It was all just warrants. It was all just justifications, and everyone can understand that.