A good grant writer does not leave much to the readers’ imagination. Page restrictions limit grant narratives and require a taut, limited narrative. A mystery writer seeks to spark the reader’s imagination but a grant writer seeks to answer all possible questions directly and early on. A grant writer who writes grant narrative mysteries won’t be writing grants for very long.
Let’s compare grant writing to the rules of mystery writing.
1. In mystery writing, plot is everything – In grant writing the core is project design, but you can’t really say it’s everything. All parts of a grant are scored and since a nearly perfect score is what you need to get funding, you can’t say that one part of a grant is “everything.”
2. Introduce both the detective and the culprit early on –I like to open each grant with a short summary paragraph about what the grant will do and for whom. It sets the stage for the reader.
3. Introduce the crime within the first three chapters of your mystery novel – This is probably most like the purpose of your grant and here again, I like to introduce that immediately, certainly sooner, not later.
4. The crime should be sufficiently violent — preferably a murder – Yikes! Well, let’s say that your solution to the needs presented should be compelling, perhaps not murderously so.
5. The crime should be believable – Your goals and objectives must be believable in terms of addressing the needs presented, in terms of scope, in terms of budget, and so on.
6. The detective should solve the case using only rational and scientific methods – In this case, your project manager, principal investigator, of project director should be implementing activities that use rational, research-based, evidence-based methods to meet the needs described.
7. The culprit must be capable of committing the crime – Use real data and cite sources for needs data, cite sources for methods to be implemented that demonstrate to the reader that the proposal and the proposing agency are capable of, and likely to, “commit the solution”.
I love your tips. I am a grant writer myself, located in Egypt. Because most of the funds come from foreign donors, grants proposals are written in english for the most part. I am also a writer and most of the writing stuff that I do in english. I recently quit my job to embark on a freelance writing journey including "grant writing" so being new in this business with a humble experience in grant writing would like to know if there's a certain framework of attitude should be followed besides the aforementioned tips.
Thanks,
May
Hi May,
Thanks for reading our blog and for commenting here! WOW you're in Egypt writing grants! I'm so intrigued! Please look at our free ebooks and webinars and you'll find lots of good information to help you get started. We are also offering online courses in the Grant Goddess University site at http://gguonline.com so those may be of interest to you as well. All the best of luck to you in your new career!