Arguing for your research
Everything from paper abstracts to grant proposals to fellowship applications, at every level from an undergraduate independent study to a full grant proposal as a faculty member, requires one key task: convincing the reader that your research project is any good. Usually "good" more specifically means: does it solve an important problem? Does it address an important issue? Does it explore important unexplored territory? And, if you haven't done it yet, do you have the right tools to solve/address/explore it? In general, I'm not a huge believer in "formulaic" writing -- the idea that every body of writing ought to be formatted the same way for best results. Especially in creative domains, so much power can be wielded in breaking traditional structures. But for scientific writing, especially project proposals or article submissions, I do find that it really helps to not have to think about how to structure something and instead just plop down a default out