Where do you like to start writing Fellowships/Grants?

[ohboyabbyjoy]

Writing my comprehensive exam/qualifying exam/thesis proposal/whatever your program calls it, which is essentially a fellowship application (NIH F31 format), and I'm at a loss of how to really dig into the writing process. I have my aims outlined as well as a significant amount of background research and preliminary data to get me started. However, I feel a little overwhelmed with where to start getting this skeleton filled inso I would love to hear from you. How do you like to approach starting your fellowships/grants? Is there an order you find best? Have any cautionary tales of writing gone wrong?

[rising_star]

I like to start by figuring out the best way to convey why my project matters (so why the research Q is relevant and to whom) and then build from there to make sure the lit review shows the background for the project, that the methods and analysis explain how I'll answer the research Q, and that it makes sense to someone not in my nuanced subfield.

[Ethan M]

I wouldn't think too much at first and just start putting my thoughts to words. Once you get the monkey off your back by having a rough draft, it is time to logically arrange your write up. Soon, things would start to make sense and you would be done with your second draft. After a gap of few days, read the entire write up and make changes to make it perfect. If you go after perfection in your first try, you will obviously be overwhelmed and wouldn't know where to start. 

[ShogunT]

I am not sure whether the meaning of comprehensive exam in my field is similar to yours, so I just give my 2 cents.

My sub-field in ECE no longer has academia grant support. I started my grant/research proposal to a large research company in my 2nd semester in grad school. I failed miserably. Reason of failure: did not have enough strong results to back the proposed idea. Experience: some friends told me to get my own research done first, but not publishing right away, then submit a grant and write a paper. For comprehensive exam/proposal that will be the prerequisite for dissertation writing: publish a paper first, which is one of the bullets in your proposal. Published works carry weight.

After the first work published, you may expand it into future research and build your comprehensive proposal around these ideas.

I personally think that you need to have at lease one goal in your proposal already implemented/published before going into the comprehensive exam. Otherwise, some strict professor in the committee would question the feasibility of the whole proposal. But again, I may not be the right person to give you this advice due to the difference in our field of research.

Edited April 26, 2016 by ShogunT

[TakeruK]

A lot of this can vary between fields, but as ShogunT kind of hinted at, I find that in the STEM fields, having some part of the project already completed greatly improves your chances of grant success. It's a little counterintuitive and I think it's not great that it works this way, however, it seems to be what actually happens. I see that most groups will have almost 50% of the work completed for a project, apply for a grant to do that project, then finish it up and use the rest of the money to start the 50% of the work towards the next project (that is based on the last project, so it's still okay to use grant funds from the first project) and then write a grant for the second project etc. This only works for broad grants that cover an area of research---you can't do this for grants that specific for one single project only though!

As to where to start, I write grant proposals like I write papers. This is just what works for me, not saying it's the only way to do it. 

1. First, like rising_star suggested, thinking about the general research Qs is important. Figure out the general overall goals of your work. I would generally write notes and thoughts that will eventually become my introduction, motivation and background theory sections. (Depending on the grant, these might not be specific sections named like this, but the equivalent sections that will convey this information).

2. Then, I would outline the message I want to communicate. I do this by listing all of the figures I want to include. If you are able to actually make the figures (i.e. you already have the data and analysis complete) then that's even better. If not, then outline the figures. Maybe draw a sketch of what you would expect the trends to be so that you can visualize the "story" that your grant is going to tell. Also, make a sketch of the figures that will describe your expected results (or the figure that would answer the research question you outline above, i.e. what you expect to get once you finish the project). Note: not all of these figures will actually go into your grant proposal, I like to think of them as "storyboarding".

3. Next, I fill in the details of the research. Write the text that connects the figures to each other and describe how you are going to get the data, how you are going to analyze it and what conclusions could you draw from it. How strong would these conclusions be? 

4. Then, go back to the introduction and now that you have a picture of what you are going to achieve in the near future and at the end of the project, you can write your introductory sections that directly addresses these points. Connect your work to the current knowledge in the field (this is where your prior lit review will be important!). Show how your work will advance your field's knowledge.

5. Iterate steps 3 and 4 until you are complete---generally, as you build up your introduction, you would decide exactly which other works are the most relevant to your research, then you can go back to Step 3 and make sure you can describe why your work can reach stronger conclusions, and as you write Step 3, you might find different angles to approach the problem, which might mean modifying your introduction/lit review/finding more papers to redo Step 4, etc.

6. Once you are happy with the above, you have your first draft! The rest of it is polishing up this draft, getting feedback from advisors and other students etc. etc. This is a process that takes a lot of work too, but here I'm just addressing the question of "how to begin?" and I think these first few steps are the hardest!