With any sport, activity, game, and competition, there is a set structure as to how things roll. This applies to LD debate with a specific amount of time that the round takes place and an order of speeches, outlined below. Don’t worry if you aren’t familiar with this at first: familiarity comes with attending multiple tournaments and debating many rounds!
All of this adds up to around 40+ minutes’ worth of speeches and prep time each round. Realistically, you will also add in the 10-15 minutes of time the judge takes to make a decision and give their feedback to each debater, thus totaling up to 1 hour on average per round at a tournament.
You may have noticed that the Affirmative (Aff) side has more speeches than the Negative (Neg), even having the last word, which helps to summarize the round from an Aff-biased perspective. This, although unfair, is balanced with the Neg’s two speeches, which are longer in time (thus easier to defend), so that both sides have 13 minutes total to speak (Aff = 6 + 4 + 3, while Neg = 7 + 6 minutes).
LD Debate Prep 