When I was in high school, my coach didn’t know what was going on – she was thrown into it. I learned the hard way by getting beat. The only way you’ll be successful writing a case/plan is to talk to someone who has won a lot of debates. If you go to a tournament, talk to a judge from another school.

The best thing to do to be successful is to go to summer debate camp – they have these all over the U.S. Some are better than others. Dartmouth used to have this thing where, in addition to their high school summer debate camp, anyone could order high school debate material from them. It was really solid stuff – the best teams in the U.S. used to go there in the summers to prepare. You ought to look online. Other good camps were at Michigan, American University. There are other good ones I can’t recall.

If this is just for some in-school debate and not a competitive tournament, please ignore all this as it really won’t matter. In that case, just look online and, even if the layout is dated, it probably won’t matter.