Writing Proposals - Chapter 3

The overarching theme of this chapter centered on identifying readers and understanding what they need to know. Unfortunately, in an actual situation, I think determining readers and their motives and attitudes are much more difficult than these abstract concepts. Specifically, I wonder how we distinguish between what readers need to know and what we want them to know, which is probably the part of the writing process that I have the most trouble with. After brainstorming, researching, and collecting ideas, how do we narrow those ideas down to the essential “need-to-know” information? In other words, how do we let go of those incredible ideas that just don’t fit the proposal? One suggestion, in addition the worksheets in our book, is to have friends, readers, or editors review a draft of the proposal before the submission deadline.

In addition to thinking about the boundaries as discussed above, I also think the one sentence proposal statement is a good idea. As a somewhat unrelated but entertaining link, I remembered this article about six-word memoirs http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18768430, and I am curious if six word proposal statements could be as effective, at least help us focus our thoughts.

In addition to figuring out what (and how much) to say, we also must determine how to say it. With this important aspect in mind, I would like to discuss the issue of power when writing proposals, specifically through the idea of authority or credibility. In terms of our thesis proposals, we might want to recall Myers study of biology articles, where researchers new to a field of study had to change their level of knowledge claims and their style of writing in respect to existing knowledge. I think this realization would fit into Johnson-Sheehan’s category of industry/community on page 44.