Flowing Drill

In competitive debate, flowing is the discipline of taking shorthand notes that map every argument made in a round, organized in vertical columns so that each argument and its responses line up horizontally across speeches. A flowing drill is a targeted training exercise designed to build that skill.

In a typical drill, a coach or partner delivers a speech — often a pre-recorded constructive from a tournament, a redelivered case, or a rapid-fire list of tags and warrants — while the debater attempts to capture it accurately on paper or a laptop (commonly in Excel or a dedicated flowing template). The drill may emphasize different sub-skills:

• Speed flowing: keeping up with cards delivered at high words-per-minute, common in policy and Lincoln-Douglas circuits.
• Tag-and-cite flowing: capturing only argument tags and source citations, useful for identifying the structure of a case.
• Short-handing: developing personal abbreviations (e.g., "econ" for economy, arrows for causal links, "XT" for extend).
• Cross-application: noting where one argument answers or implicates another across the flow.
• Responsive flowing: pausing after each speech to generate responses in the next column, simulating prep time.

Flowing drills are standard in U.S. high school and collegiate policy debate, parliamentary debate, and on the British Parliamentary circuit, though the column structure varies by format. Coaches at programs such as the Dartmouth Debate Institute and the National Debate Forum incorporate flowing drills into summer camp curricula. The skill transfers directly to Model UN, where delegates flow moderated caucus speeches to identify bloc positions, dropped clauses, and contradictions to exploit in later interventions or in unmoderated negotiation.

A well-developed flow is what allows a debater or delegate to credibly say an opponent "dropped" an argument — a claim that only holds weight if the notes can prove it.