As summer is upon us, what will you do to get a head start on the 2023 speech and debate season? In part one of this series, we covered how to get a head start on platform speeches and in part two of this series we’ll be going through how to kick off with Interps and limited preps. 

As I mentioned in the first post, this first series is targeted toward novice speech and debaters (first or the second year), and a second series will be directed towards advanced students.

Interps

Begin by thinking back to books you’ve read over the school year, movies you’ve watched (there’s typically a junior novelization done off that movie), or  favorite novels you’ve read in the past. From there, try to narrow down what type of story you want to go for…one that makes the judge laugh? Cry? Grab the edge of their seat and bite their nails? By then, you can pick the book that you think you’ll enjoy acting out the most and that has the best impact. 

A good Interp will make a judge feel a certain emotion during the speech that sticks with them throughout the rest of the day, and possibly even keeping them up at night. A great Interp will make the judge feel a variety of different emotions. Make them laugh, make them cry, lead them into suspense, and keep them on their feet! 

Once you’ve found your selection and analyzed the central theme of your Interp, I’d recommend spending a bit of time writing about your theme, so you understand what you’re shooting for with your Interp and can get a general idea of the intro section you’ll add.

With the theme out of the way, analyze the characters, plot, and location to get an idea of how you’ll act it out. When my sister and I did a duo interpretation of the Best School Year Ever by Barbara Robinson, we wrote all the characters down on a sheet of paper in order of importance. After that, we struck the characters at the bottom of the list and held on to the main characters only. From there, we wrote next to the character how we would go about blocking them out (their accent, facial expression, posture, stance, etc.). 

The best thing to get your hands dirty is to begin cutting! My sister and I did this by chapter and cut out sections that didn't fit the main message of our story. You’ve probably heard this before, but if the section of the story doesn’t fit the message then it doesn’t belong in the Interp. Remember, you’re on a time crunch of ten minutes. This was one of my struggles in my open this past year. I kept trying to hold on to the funny scenes, but they were only time wasters as they didn't fit my theme! So keep this in mind. 

One other tip: when writing the script, look up a PDF version of your story (if one is available), then copy and paste it into your script. It’s much more time-efficient to cut that way!

You got it from there, you have the pieces of the puzzle, now you have to put them together!

Limited Preps

Extemporaneous. To paraphrase, Josiah Hemp says that one of the best ways to begin understanding Extemp is by practicing the art of research. This could be on any topic, something biblical, something political, or even on a more random topic. Researching and analyzing is the best way to get an understanding of things. For me, in order to analyze something I have to write it out. For example: during the Ukrainian Crisis this past February, I was constantly asked “What do you think of the Ukraine situation?” and I never had an answer. So one day I watched a ton of Ben Shapiro’s and wrote down the basics of what he was saying. Whenever he said a word I didn’t understand (such as No Fly Zones), I’d do more research on No-Fly Zones. Once I had a bunch of information on a notepad, I analyzed it by writing a simple essay on it!

Impromptu. Practice. Practice. Practice. It’s truly the name of the game. There’s a family I know who practiced impromptu every day and it improved how they spoke and prepared a speech in two minutes!

Apologetics. There’s nothing better for this than just spending time in scripture every day over the summer and analyzing and beginning to understand the Word of God. I’ve also found listening to podcasts (Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology is a great one!) and reading theology books very helpful as well! 

As far as limited preps go, simply developing good habits are very helpful!

I’m not at all saying you have to follow this exact method to get started, because there are tons of different approaches to take in taking the first couple of steps. But myself and others have found these steps super helpful to kick off the speech and debate season!