Writing Technique: Addressing an Audience

Writing conference papers is different to writing thesis chapters, or even to writing articles.

I do write my conference papers in full: I read from them when I am presenting. In the ideal world, I've written the paper far enough in advance that I have edited it a few times, practiced more than a few times, and so can spend a fair amount of time doing more than heads-down reading off the page. In the world as it usually is, I have part of the paper blocked in with [talk about x for 1 minute] that I improvise off, which can break up the reading as well. It also helps that I did speech and drama at high school, so I have reasonable habits such as reading aloud at a decent pace, pausing according to punctuation,  and looking up from the page and around the audience to start with. New Kid on the Hallway has an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of reading papers here that may be of interest.

Nonetheless, I find that having the whole thing written out is important. Mostly because I dont 'know what I'm going to say till I've written it, but there are other factors. Having a written version allows me to check that I can fit the paper into the time alloted to it (nothing worse that those people that get to 15 minutes, realise they have only got through the introduction to their argument but look at the time and jump to the conclusion). Also, in my field (or in the version of it I carry in my head), there is a valorisation of elegant structure and eloquent expression which I know I can't do without writing first.

But one of my key writing techniques for constructing conference papers is to talk it through to an audience. This audience might be my dog, the bottle of water on my desk, or anyone wandering by my office and silly enough to ask about the conference paper. Having that audience there as I test out the flow of ideas, the selection of relevant information, the rhetorical devices that hopefully make the paper interesting to listen to forces me to think about how the paper will work an a form of oral communication. What will grab the audience? How can I make the argument followable and interesting? Where do I need to slow down and explain a term, an idea, a contextual reference? Talking things through (literally) is one of my touchstones in writing conference papers.

I'll start of just playing with ideas out loud, and then jotting them down (a verbal version of brainstorming or mindmapping). Later in the process, I'll talk through sections of the paper. Once the whole thing is drafted I try to round up test audiences (I've been very lucky in belonging to two post-graduate/staff groups - the Nineteenth Century Group and the Round Table - that often organise trial run-throughs for their members ahead of conferences). I then take the feedback from the test audience and make changes.

At the moment I'm at the brainstorming-out-loud stage for my AVSA paper, but this weekend I'll try to move beyond that.