Less prep for the 2NC

Cliffs notes-
1. Write blocks ahead of time
2. ????
3. Profit

Some people think that if there is 10 minutes of prep, the 2NC should evenly divide prep time for the 2NC and 2NR in a 5-5 manner. To these people I laugh and say "that is not the optimal prep time distribution newb". Why is this? Ask any old timer what the hardest speech in debate is and they will say the 2NR (they are wrong, but whatever). The reason the 2NR is so allegedly hard is thrice fold
-the 1AR (assuming competence) has collapsed down to a few devastating arguments and made a lot of fast but short arguments so you must be technically proficient
-the 2AR has a lot of options of where to take the debate so you must be strategically sound in figuring out where they can try and eek out a win and lay the hammer down
-you often have to make tough decisions of which of 2 strategies to go for- decisions that include factors like evidence quality, the judge and their biases etc.

That's a lot to get done in 5 minutes, I think it would be better with say 8 or 9. Now lets think about the 2NC- what does the 2NC have to do
-get up and read a bunch of cards
-.....

Oh yea the 2NC does nothing. I don't mean nothing in terms of literally nothing, I mean nothing that is difficult or important or thought provoking. Why is this? Well what happens in a debate is the 1AC reads some cards, the 1NC reads some, then the 2AC reads a few and makes some analytics, and then the 2NC does.... what exactly? Well in 99/100 debates the 2NC takes a few issues and tries to bury the 1AR in arguments, most often evidenced ones. There are not a lot of tough decisions, there aren't a lot of aff arguments to answer (odds are the the 2AC didnt make 30 answers to the politics disad). The 2NC doesn't have to make any all or nothing decisions or take any risks because they have the 1NR insurance policy, its the only speech where if you mess something up there is ZERO COST because the 1NR can just fix it. So obviously you don't need a lot of prep time thinking.

What about preparing your evidence etc. for the speech? I don't think this should take you much tinme either. Lets say before the round you and your coaches decide vs RPS you will read
-states/politics
-cap K
-T pos
-warming good/heg bad
-Oil DA

before the round you have decided the block will either be
-2NC States/politics, 1NR Cap k
or
-2NC Cap K 1nr T pos
or
-2NC Oil and 1NR case

Now, what do you do before the debat to get ready if you are the 2n? There are 3 seperate strategies you are thinking about going for, seems like a lot to get ready in 20 minutes. First, you don't need to prep the cap k- the 1n should do that. The 1n will arleady get 5 hours of prep for whatever is in their 1NR so they don't need to worry, and the cap K is a possible 1NR option, so them doing it is 2 birds with 1 stone. By prep an argument I mean the following
-all evidence highlighted
-case specific links/impact arguments written out/prepared
-considering potential aff answers and getting relevant answers put together/writing out new arguments if need be (coaching can obviously help here as can scouting)

The 1NR is taking case or T so don't worry about that.

So the 2N now has to worry about politics/states and oil. Lets look at oil first

Its the tournament of champions, if you plan on reading the oil DA here you should either
-have link/impact blocks done by now
-be knowledgable enough about oil economics to explain most things without needing to write them out in detail

or you should be shot like a derby horse who breaks their leg. So in the 20 minutes before the debate you maybe take 5 to get the specific links you would want to read together, make sure your generic U 2NC is still highlighted (you should of done this before) and check the caselist/scouting to see what impact turns they read.

Now we have 15 minutes left. States- vs RPS the 2AC will probably say... a whole lot of nonses because they have no answers. I mean, things like "reg certainty" and "patchwork" etc you should already have blocks too. You maybe havent debated RPS all year so you highlight the 5 states solve cards that you will read, that takes another 5-10 minutes maybe. The 2AC will make a lot of args like "perm do both", "50 state illegit" and what not that you should either have a block too or be able to answer off the top of your head, you don't need to worry about prepping these.

Now, politics. What will the aff say here? Well odds are you are reading a terrible politics disad the aff will have no answers to. Odds are that having no answers they will just read stupid generic link turns like "3 people like the plan" and then a card that says "bipart key to the agenda". Before showing up at the tournament, since it is a national championship, is at the ned of the year, and you are not a total joker, you should have
-blocks to common aff turns
-link blocks for popular cases
-uniqueness blocks

etc. So you check the casebook/scouting, see what they say. Your 2NC is pretty simple and consists of
-we control issue specific uniqueness, our link o/w thier turn, da o/w case

Rinse and repeat. None of this should require a lot of prep because you have it ready ahead of time. Now maybe you get the aff link turn cards and read them to make sure you know what they are saying (or better have ur sick partner do it) but thats not adding a lot of prep time either since they will all be highlited to 1 sentence and say nothing anyway. Ditto uniqueness.

Now lets say you are actually having a real debate. You are reading a good politics disad (healthcare) and the aff has good answers. Before the round you want to put them on a percentage system of what you think they will do - link or impact turn. Generally with no other knowledge you can assume its 90-10, the other team will only impact turn politics in 1/10 debates. So you can focus on the link turn. Here you want to do your pre round prep a little different- when uniqueness will be hotly contested it is less useful to have a generic block and more useful to have a small block of your 3 best generic U cards, and then specific responses to aff warrants for why healthcare won't pass. So this may involve more pre round organizing /highliting, but again hopefully you did that ahead of time. So in this debate you may have to spend more time pulling cards as you will be more careful about reading specific cards in specific places, but this won't add a lot of time.

Ok enough with that example, the 2AC is now speaking, what do you do

1. Write down as little as possible- when i debated my flow of the 2AC on the india deal disad looked like this

nu
pc low
not k2 rels
bipart turn
ww

That is pretty brief. The aff may have read as many as 12 cards on politics (3 uniqueness cards, 2 PC spent on another issue, 1 impact defense card, 2x plan key to bipart, 2x bipart key to agenda, 2-3x ww). Now the 2AC might not have said "winners win... more ev winners win.... and winners win..." but in a lot of debates they do. More importantly I grouped like arguments together. So when I got up to give the 2NC it would go like this
-impact overview with 3x turns the case cards (1 for each adv)
-U block, mixed in with specific indicts of their evidence/reasons to prefer ours
-link overview about why if we won issue specific U we won direction of link
-2-3 pc high cards
-specific carded responses to their reasons pc was low
-india deal is k2 relations
-new 2 card impact
-card on why PC most important link
-plan not bipart, no spillover
-winners win non U card, plan not win, winners don't win (point of clarity- many people read winners win non U and then winners lose- don't do this)

Of those things all but maybe 3 were blocked out before the tournament, the other 3 were handled before the round. So during the debate as the 2AC was speaking I would jot down "nu" and then pull my cards together, which generally you can get done while they are still speaking, and you should DEF be able to get it done in the 3 mns of cx.

Now some people might be thinking "this is stupid, i need to read the other teams ev and make super specific witty analytics not just get up and make generic babble". This is a good point, hyper specific witty analytics are in fact good. However,
1. odds are you are failing at that
2. The aff won't go for every argument, if you spend a ton of time being super witty about all of them much of that time will be wasted
3. Its to time consuming.
4. Most 2N's don't flow themselves, and in the 2% of debates where they do think of something intelligent to say in the 2NC, they usually have forgotten it by the 2NR

In my view, you slowplay this wit untill the 2NR. So the 1AR collapses down to just nu and ww. In my model you now spend your 2NR prep getting into hyper specific wit about those 2 things, and you haven't wasted any time on other issues. These are always evidence comparison or that style of arguments so they are never considered new in the 2NR, they are the kind of thing judges WANT you to do.

Some things people seem to waste a lot of prep on
1. "can we get our 1NC back" if you, as the 2N , do not know what your 1NC said you are a total joker. Stop reading this and join the theatre club.
2. Reading irrelevant evidence- in the above hypothetical, if you are going for states politics, you don't need to read the aff oil evidence. If you are reading evidence trying to make your decision on what to go for that is slightly better but still bad play. Here is why- if you are reading their evidence on the oil disad 1 of 2 things has happened
A. you have been caught unprepared with a turn about Crudejikistan that you didn't anticipate- at which point you should probably go for states
or
B. You think a decision is really close/marginal at which point you should of already decided based on
-your relative comfort/how prepared you are
-the other teams weakness
-the 1NR

I will elaborate on the last two. Their weakness- there is no perfect 2AC. There are awesome 2AC's, but it is impossible to be perfect. What I mean by that is in the above example, your 1NC is sufficiently diverse that the 2AC CAN NOT put you in a bad position. Lets say the 2AC is a total baller and
-straight turns everything
-reads 3 add ons

oh no, you are screwed right.... wrong. It is impossible to put you in a bad position using that strategy because you have several mutually exclusive options. If the 2AC does that, how many POSSIBLE answers could they have put on each issue- mayb 8 if they are BLAZING. So you have 2 disads that each have 8 answers, a K that has 8 answers, T that has 8 answers etc. This amazing 2AC cannot "spread the block" unless your 1NC was a total hindenberg. So what you need to do here is keep a cool head and think it through in about 20 seconds. Much like multiple choice tests your gut instinct is usually correct. You dont need to read 32 cards to decide between cap/politics/states/oil. This may seem lazy or anti educational to some, but be brutally honest- the odds of them having a life changing card that would swing your decision and overcome other factors is remote to say the least. In my entire debate career I can think of 1 time where that happened and I lost vs like 20-30 times where I overthought the decision, wasted prep time, and made costly errors because of it.

As for the 1NR- you can't make your strategic decisions in a vacuum. So for example, while they may have boned oil, where they very strong on the case? Do you think you can win with only 1 complete strategy in the block? You have to take into account all the factors. So if you need a complete strategy in the 1NR becuase you think the 1AR is really good and will kill you after a unidimensional block, then oil is out from the get go. Can cap be handled in 5 mns? If yes, then even if you think it is your best option you should extend staates and politics in the 2NC- do you see why? Because people assume the 2NC will go for what will be in the 2NR but also because you are wasting 3 mns of time if you take for 8 what can be done in 5.

Back to things people waste time on
3. Looking for evidence- this should be organized before the round. before the debate if you areextending politics you should have laying out on the table a cross hatched pile of evidence that includes the likely cards you will read. You may have 20 likely arguments in there, the 2AC reads 8 of them, you pull out the appropriate stacks and go. This is much easier than constantly looking at the index of a 200 page politics file, pulling some cards, then taking out the link file- getting some stuff, then getting the RPS neg and grabbing case links etc. All that should be done before the round.

4. Writing a lot down- you need to start practicing writing as little as possible for yor arguments. For example, a beginning debater might write down
"uniqueness o/w the link- they don't have any india deal won't pass cards, the plan can't make it pass anymore, so if we win uniqueness they can't win offense"- writing by hand that will take a while. An intermediate debater might write down "u o/w- they have no issue specific cards". An advanced debater would write down "u o/w". And a born killer wouldn't write down anything becuase they would know to say that. You should be forcing yourself to progress down that line to needing to write as little as possible. In fact I think a top level 2N would be well served by doing what many 1AR's do and not flow the 2NC/1NR but instead write down your responses.