Anatomy of the 1AC
What is the 1AC? Why is it important?
The 1AC stands for the first affirmative constructive speech. It's kind of super important. (I mean, it only is the first speech of the debate and practically decides what the debate is going to be about. No biggie.) The 1AC is responsible for presenting the substance of the debate. This includes four main parts: plan, inherency, advantages, and solvency.
Let's go through each part.
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1. The Plan
This is a policy action proposed by the affirmative in order to uphold the resolution. These can be pretty diverse. For example, the 2014-2015 high school policy debate resolution was, "The United States federal government should substantially increase its exploration and/or development of Earth's oceans." Possible plans ranged from promoting aquaculture to building offshore wind farms to funding desalination plants. |
Rare photo of me debating the oceans topic.
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2. Inherency
This is just a fancy word for "status quo," or what is happening right now. This evidence is just here to state that the plan hasn't happened yet. This is important, because if the plan is already in place, then there's no reason to do it. This could be evidence that simply states that the plan is completely new, or that the plan improves upon an already existing system.
3. Advantages/Harms -- I know, seeing these two words next to each other might be a little confusing. Aren't advantages and harms complete opposites? The reason why these two words are so related is because the affirmative addresses the harms that are happening in the status quo and fixes them, which is it is an advantage to the affirmative. Basically, without a harm, there is no advantage.
Advantages make up arguably the most important part of the 1AC, because these are reasons why your plan is a good idea, AKA why the judge should vote for you. These involve link stories. You can think of link stories as dominoes. When one domino falls over, another one does. That other one causes yet another domino to fall over, and so forth. Link stories are similar to the following: something is happening now or is going to happen → this causes a bad thing to happen → our plan fixes what is happening now so the bad thing doesn't happen → failure to do our plan means the bad thing will happen, which leads to extinction (or death, or loss of value to life, or just anything that's scary and unrealistic).
4. Solvency
This is pretty simple. This just explains how your plan can solve for your advantages. For example, if the plan is to feed Victoria carrots, and the advantage is that it'll make her healthy, the solvency might say something about how carrots are super nutritious and good for you, so carrots are able to improve Victoria's health.
This is just a fancy word for "status quo," or what is happening right now. This evidence is just here to state that the plan hasn't happened yet. This is important, because if the plan is already in place, then there's no reason to do it. This could be evidence that simply states that the plan is completely new, or that the plan improves upon an already existing system.
3. Advantages/Harms -- I know, seeing these two words next to each other might be a little confusing. Aren't advantages and harms complete opposites? The reason why these two words are so related is because the affirmative addresses the harms that are happening in the status quo and fixes them, which is it is an advantage to the affirmative. Basically, without a harm, there is no advantage.
Advantages make up arguably the most important part of the 1AC, because these are reasons why your plan is a good idea, AKA why the judge should vote for you. These involve link stories. You can think of link stories as dominoes. When one domino falls over, another one does. That other one causes yet another domino to fall over, and so forth. Link stories are similar to the following: something is happening now or is going to happen → this causes a bad thing to happen → our plan fixes what is happening now so the bad thing doesn't happen → failure to do our plan means the bad thing will happen, which leads to extinction (or death, or loss of value to life, or just anything that's scary and unrealistic).
4. Solvency
This is pretty simple. This just explains how your plan can solve for your advantages. For example, if the plan is to feed Victoria carrots, and the advantage is that it'll make her healthy, the solvency might say something about how carrots are super nutritious and good for you, so carrots are able to improve Victoria's health.
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Example 1ACs
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