From Conference Paper to Article: Turning Talk into Prose

I was in a conversation recently with someone facing one of the dread tasks of academic writing: turning a conference paper into an article. There are people who write conference papers that are basically already articles. Neither of us fit that bill.

My conference papers are intended to be talks. Informal. Funny. Carefully paced. They have places where I gesture at an image instead of describing it, places where a slide does half the argumentative work, and places where I say something in two sentences because I know I can explain it with tone of voice, pacing, or whatever I put up on the screen.

That works perfectly well in a conference room or on Zoom. It does not, however, make a good article. The rhythm’s wrong. The vocabulary is too casual. The argument often relies more on audience connection than carefully scripted references to an expansive scholarly literature.

And I think one reason conference-to-article conversion can feel so horrible is that we often describe the job as “expanding the conference paper.” For me, that framing is almost instantly stressful, because really, the skin doesn't fit.

A conference paper doesn't need to be expanded into an article. It needs to be translated into one. You need a mechanism for getting roughly the same intellectual content out, but in a different language.

So here's my practical step-by-step process. Guess what? It includes a spreadsheet.

Step 1. Break the conference paper apart

First, I copy the conference paper into a spreadsheet. Not paragraph by paragraph. Smaller than that. I put about one or two sentences into each row of the first column.

That sounds tedious. It really isn't. And the point is to stop seeing the conference paper as a sacred block of prose that somehow has to grow into something twice its size.

Now it is just a sequence of little ideas.

Next to each one, I have an empty box to its right. That empty box is where the article version goes.

Step 2. Translate, don't polish

Then I start rewriting down the second column. I am not line-editing the conference paper. I am asking what each little unit needs to become when the audience can no longer hear me speak.

Sometimes a conference-paper sentence survives almost unchanged. Sometimes two breezy sentences become a full paragraph. Sometimes I discover that a sentence was only functioning because the slide behind me contained six pieces of evidence. Sometimes I realize that “as we all know” is doing an enormous amount of unpaid labor.

This is where the translation idea helps me.

The question isn't: How do I make this sentence more article-like?

It's: What work was this sentence doing in the talk, and what does the article need in order to do the same work?

Those are different questions.

It looks like this:

(This is a real example from this spring: my conference-paper prose on the left, and article prose on the right. The point isn’t simply to make the original longer; it’s to ask what the written version needs in order to do the same argumentative work.)

Step 3. Insert the missing stuff

As I work, I simply insert blank spreadsheet rows wherever the article needs something the conference paper didn't: supporting examples, additional evidence, references to the scholarship, historical context, the important take-away to round out the argument.

For me, those blank rows are important psychologically. They turn “THIS PAPER NEEDS SO MUCH MORE STUFF” into a series of small, local jobs.

I don't have to solve the article. I have to fill this box. Then the next one. Then the one after that. Short tasks, not long ones.

Step 4. Don't forget the slides

If the conference slides contain substantial content, they go into the spreadsheet too.

This is particularly important for the way I give papers, because a lot of information can be sitting on the screen while I am saying very little about it. A chart that was visible for thirty seconds might become a full paragraph of article prose. An image may need description, contextualization, citation, and then actual analysis. A quotation I could simply let an audience read may need to be introduced and unpacked.

Slides are part of the conference paper's argument. If I convert only the script, I am leaving chunks of the original argument behind.

Step 5. Move back into a document

Eventually the second column begins to look less like a set of rewrites and more like an article draft. That's when I leave my beloved spreadsheet and move back into a regular document.

It may not be pretty, but by this point, it’s a continuity draft. I know what I’m saying, I know where in the article I’ll be saying it, and I’ve started using the voice that belongs to article prose instead of public delivery. It’s a win!

Step 6. Add the things articles need

Once I have a continuity draft in place, it’s easy – and fun! – to build out the parts that belong particularly to article format.

For me, that usually means a more substantial contextualizing introduction – the “lit review.” This is an excuse to decide what I want to include as context, and what not. The theorizing section is also an excuse to dive back into how I got interested in this problem in the first place. I limit myself to a maximum of three scholarly days, because playing around with the literature is the “big idea” part of the gig, and I could sit there for weeks, if given a chance.

It also means the conclusion gets bigger. Conference conclusions can sometimes amount to: “Look! This thing I have just shown you is neat, and here is why you should care.” Articles have more room for moralizing. I like the “so what, so what, now what” formulation. So what did we learn? And then: so what does that change (and for whom)? And finally: now what? What does this case let us see differently? What larger conversation does it alter? What becomes possible because we've followed the evidence this far?

Those questions are much easier for me to answer once I actually have article prose in front of me.

Step 7. Normal edits

After all of that work, the conference paper is essentially gone. I am editing an article.

That means the usual work: structure, argument, rhythm, clarity, flow, repetition, citations, transitions, and all the other things that make a draft slowly become something somebody else might want to read. (Taking out the giant shouty “LOOK FOR EX” and actually DO that work!). But that’s just cleanup!

Conference Paper → Article: The Seven Steps Break the conference paper apart Translate, don’t polish Insert the missing stuff Don’t forget the slides >Move back into a document Add the things articles need Normal edits

Why This Works for Me

I've used this exact process twice this past spring. Both conference papers became articles, and both articles were accepted, hooray! So I'm inclined to think the method has legs.

I don't imagine everyone needs the spreadsheet. Some people can probably make this transformation comfortably inside a Word document. That’s not me, though. Rewriting there feels like “failed text being edited,” over and over and over again.

The spreadsheet does something useful for my brain: it makes the act of translation visible. On the left is what worked when I was standing in front of a room. On the right is what has to work when I'm not there anymore. Low stress, lots of little steps, and a real sense of progress as the article comes together.

Bit by bit, as they say, and sooner or later it all gets done. With my spreadsheet method, it gets done faster, and with a lot less stress.

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