Thread by @realscientists

OK, let's talk about writing proposals. Advice thread incoming.

Writing is a way bigger part of physics and astrophysics than I naively expected, and writing is an important skill to develop

Writing a good proposal can be broken down into two basic things, in my opinion
1) Knowing who your audience is
2) Telling your audience why they should care

No matter what you're writing a proposal for, you should try and find out who will be evaluating them. If you are writing a proposal for telescope time, you are being evaluated by a panel of astronomy experts. For a fellowship, it may be a more general panel of scientists

No matter which of these you're writing, it's worth hooking the evaluators in in the first sentence with how you're going to contribute to the Big Problems.

The Big Problems in astronomy are set out in Decadal Survey documents.

Many of my proposals are on the topic of 'How are elements formed and recycled in stars?' This is something that astronomers know is an Important Big Problem, and more generally, it's an exciting question because it relates to us as humans.

I start my proposals with a few sentences which cover the big picture. Here's an example of a successful proposal of mine.

I will follow this up with 2 sentences on how this problem can be tackled more specifically. If it's a job application, I then add 2 more sentences highlighting why I should be the one to tackle the problem.

I learned this technique from @JossBlandHawtho, who gave a great talk about proposal writing. He advised figuring out what problem you want to look at and saying /why/ it's a problem, /how/ you can solve it, but most importantly, /why you/ in particular.

This makes up the first 1/3 of a page of my proposal, and I usually put it in a highlighted grey box. I then follow up with some more specific information, detailing the background of the problem

The amount of detail is highly dependent on who is reading. To gauge this, I get a hold of a few successful proposals for the same program that have been submitted in the past.

As a specific for job applications, I usually give a general plan of what I will do (how much detail is job dependent) and then show, with examples from my CV and papers, exactly /why they should hire me to do it/. Don't expect people to extrapolate expertise from your CV

More generally, it's important to make sure that your project is feasible (ahem, observers). I've ranked proposals down because they've proposed to look at a target that isn't even visible in the semester they've proposed (and given that feedback)

It's also important to get several people to proof-read for typos and tone. At least one of these people should have experience evaluating proposals at the level of the thing you're applying for.

As a general rule, write in short paragraphs and clear sentences. Use bold font and text boxes for emphasis, but this can be overdone so only highlight the /most important things/. Oh, and figures are great if they're simple and easy to read.

For proposals being evaluated by non-specialist experts, try and avoid too much jargon. I generally convert 'parsecs' to 'light-years', which is often more impressive sounding and generally understood.

You may also have to supply a 'description for the general public/politicians'. Please don't dismiss this as pointless - spend a decent amount of time working on it! Imagine you are tweeting an executive summary of your project to your non-scientist followers!

And finally, try not to leave writing until a week before the deadline (as tempting as this may be) - leave ample time for proof-reading by a few people to polish the thing as much as you can.

Do you have any tricks for successful proposal writing that have worked for you? I'd love to hear about it.