Here’s a crazy thing that happened to me one time.

 We were in college in semifinals (I think… may’ve been quarters, we ended up winning the tourney  and I forget that kind of thing) and my partner, also a former homeschool debater like me, was going up there to give the 1AR. 

It was a value debate with a team format (yeah, that exists). So think Team Policy speech times with Value resolutions. 

My partner used all of our prep time for the 1AR, then walked up to the lectern and said “go ahead, start the time, I need to think a minute.”

I panicked. 

He thought. 

I guess he organized his speech in his mind. 

With about 3 minutes and 30 seconds left, he began. And SMOKED IT.

We won. (And he won 1st place speaker at the entire tournament, by the way. Obviously this speech didn’t count, but trust me, we forgot he took that extra prep time during his speech.)

Many coaches don’t know how to coach rebuttals because they’ve never given one. If you’ve only been on the “audience” side of the lectern, it’s much easier to focus on the earlier speeches than the rebuttals. 

Having closed around $50M in deals in my life I now better understand the idea of the rebuttal and the art of the close. While I can’t teach you everything about it in this blog/article, I think I can offer you some pointers that might change you how do rebuttals forever. 

What’s a Rebuttal For?

Let’s start with what they’re not for… rebuttals are not for:

1. Line by line everything. Instead, rebuttals are for the  big picture; the whole shabang. 

2. “Going by the flow.” Nope nope nope. Rebuttals are for synthesizing what’s gotten on the flow until now. At some point it’s time to simplify rather than expand the total number of concepts going on.

3. Spread. Expanding complexity rather than simplifying it gives a beautiful opportunity to your opponents to make sense of things. 

A rebuttal is an aide to the audience to help them weigh what’s working from both sides. 

So there’s one more principle you need to take into account to do this well: both sides are always winning at something. If you can’t see that, you’re more likely to surprise-lose than win. Seriously. 

The reason the other side is winning could be a great argument, a weak argument that’s distracting, or even sympathy for how badly they’re being creamed (yes, that’s real). The worst intermediate debaters go for all-or-nothing wins. The most mature debaters deal with the best points the other side is making, assuming those points are there and correctly identifying them. 

A rebuttal gives the judge what they’re asking for from the beginning: help me make my decision for me. They want you to take the best not the worst of your opponent’s position and grapple with it. If you do that, in that way, you will “write the RFD” for them. If you don’t, you’re leaving yourself open for surprise. 

So a rebuttal should be where you take the BEST of the opponent’s position, make it even better, then refute it anyways, keeping the big picture in mind. 

How Do I Do That?

There are two factors that will make the difference here:

1. Identify the best things that your opponents are saying. This is what your judge will latch on to and use in their RFD. Your job is to name it—name what’s persuasive—and refute it as if it’s strong instead of weak.

2. Organize everything that’s happened so far and make it simpler, not more complex. If you increase the complexity, then you’re leaving yourself more open to judge intervention (deciding what’s important). 

So I’ve got some techniques that will help you. 

Here are an few:

1. Argument reduction. The prevention strategy is hard to explain in a simple blog/article in every possible variation, but it’s creating fewer total arguments in the first place and making sure your voting issues actually match the names and point numbers of the original points made in the constructives. 

2. Your rebuttals need to synthesize the existing points down to fewer total points. But the “we have 3 voting issues” strategy is not a real strategy if those 3 voting issues do not exactly match the names and numbers of previous points you made! Anything else adds to complexity, even if it “feels like” simplification.

 

3. Use the “the most persuasive thing they’re saying” strategy. It really will help you craft the RFD of the judge if you accept that something is persuasive from the other side then you name it, The conceit of intermediate teams is thinking they’re winning all or nothing. National-class debaters recognize the other side always has something and they need to identify that something and refute it.

How to Get Better

Well… first of all, come to camp! You need to learn from an experienced debater winner what it takes to set up and prep for an amazing rebuttal.

Second off you need to set up your rebuttals from the constructives. Keep the names of things simple, stick to the names and numbers of arguments from constructives, and go for fewer points developed well instead of many points.

Finally, you can study and imitate great rebuttals. There are enough available online now to watch and learn. Imitation is Classical Rhetoric’s number one tool for learning. Literally immerse yourself in other rounds then try to give as good or better speech and than the rebuttalist gave in that moment. 

Oh yeah, you could also come to our online debate camp and get deeper training and practice in closing the deal with rebuttals ;) 

-Isaiah McPeak