Rebecca F. Kuang: belief

Transcript context

…How is it you think that doing so much debate influenced your writing? I am still friends with a lot of debate coaches. A lot of the folks who I competed against or was on a debate team with — they still work in debate education, and they coach debates. We actually have a lot of conversations about how we think it benefits high schoolers, how it trains us to think what debate is good for and also what debate is not good for. I think there are two main benefits I took from debate. The first is that I’ve never been afraid of public speaking, at least not since ninth grade. This is a tremendous advantage, especially if you’re being sent out on a book tour. It is really good not to get stage fright before you step out in front of hundreds of people. The second thing I took away from debate is this electric sense of knowing when you’ve connected with an audience, especially in the final speeches, when you have to tie everything together and you only have three minutes to make all your most important points, and especially later on in a tournament where the rooms might be packed with spectators. You have this spidey sense of when a sentence you’ve just uttered resonates with the crowd. You can feel the crowd’s energy. You know exactly what to say that will get people on your side. You know how to phrase things in the most concise and effectively compelling way. Which is not to say I’m always very good at this, but I always knew when I had done it successfully. I think that translates into writing compelling fiction because you know when you’re boring the audience. You know when you’ve gone on too long about a tangent that nobody really cares about. You have that ticking clock in the back of your head, and you know you’ve got to come around and get right to the point, the core, the center, the electric sentence that the reader is really there for. I don’t strike that chord all the time, but I know when I have, and I think debate has been very valuable in inculcating that instinct. Well, you didn’t ask this, but I think there are lots of things that debate is not good for. What is it not good for?…

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