Find a Topic/Crafting your Proposal
You're going to be writing about some aspect of celebrity, fame and fandom.
That wasn't very helpful was it? Too broad? Feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities? Don't know where to begin? A few suggestions:
Now look at all three together. Are you interested in bandom? The phenomena that is Twilight? Reality television? The portrayal of fame in film and on television? The economics of fame (it is after all a billion dollar business)? The psychology? The sociological underpinnings of fan communities? Be prepared to begin finding your topic by *talking* - to your classmates, your friends, your instructor(s), anyone who will stay still long enough to listen. Once you've talked about it enough, you'll be ready to start writing.
Most writing is not done for teachers in academic environments. Rather it is done to inform or persuade or entertain a particular group of people. In other words, writing is performative; it is produced in order to get a job done. Before you do anything else you should consider your audience. Who do you see yourself writing to? Are you trying to convince policy makers, rally peers, present a different perspective on a particular issue for an audience of skeptics/true believers? What do you want your writing to do? In a larger sense you are being asked to think about the uses of knowledge and information. Good for its own sake? Or for what it can get accomplished? Or some greyer area in the middle?
A proposal is always addressed to a specific person at a specific publication. Once you have decided audience and purpose, you'll need to decide on a venue. You will be addressing your proposal to a specific publication. That publication will be decided by the audience you're aiming for and the diciplines you are drawing from. When deciding on venue, consider the sources you encounter in your research. Are all the articles you're looking at coming from the same two or three journals? Chances are that if a journal has already published one article on your topic it might be interested in another. Are they all over the disciplinary map? You may want to find a cross-diciplinary journal then.
Your target audience may change as your topic evolves and you may have to rethink audience/venue. However, it is good to have something concrete in mind as you begin the process.
You can now begin to draft your proposal. It should include:
The Overview is just that. You will indicate both topic and thesis here (yes, there are different). You also want to provide a hook that will get your prospective readers interested from the first line. There is no one magic formula for a good hook. You might begin with a short anecdote that sets the stage for the rest of the proposal (and also helps to establish both your personal stake in the paper and why you are the best person to write it). You might provide a startling statistic to grab your reader’s attention. You could also make reference to a current event that has direct bearing on your topic (a court case, a piece of legislature, a rally, even the opening of a film, or unexpected success – or failure – of a television show) to show the timeliness of your topic.
There are some things you should avoid however. Cliches. Hackneyed, trite, or stale opening sentences such as “My research paper will be about . . . .” Writing that is too dense, slow moving or written in the passive voice. If you don’t sound excited about your topic, don’t expect anyone else to be. The hardest part of a proposal is the first few sentences and (arguably) you should spend more time on these than anything else. Try to come up with several different approaches and see which one works best for you. And don’t scrap completely the ones you don’t use now. As your research goes forward and your project evolves, you might find that you also need to take a different approach in your proposal. I suggest creating a separate file for the bits that you do not use now, but that might come in handy later on.
The Author Background. does not need to be the story of your life, but it should give the prospective publisher some indication of why you are particularly well suited to write the paper. Do you have direct knowledge of the subject? Have you been personally affected by something relating to your topic? Are you approaching the topic from a fresh and unique perspective only you can bring to it? Expertise comes in many forms. Ask yourself why you were initially drawn to the topic to begin with. Why does it matter to you? Again, that personal investment will translate into reader investment.
The section on Competition should indicate what else has been written on this topic and what position those writers have taken on the subject. It assumes that you have done your homework on the topic and are aware of the general attitudes already out there. In order to demonstrate this, make reference to specic authors and specific pieces of work. Position yourself in relation to the work that has already been done on your topic. If a lot had been written, show how you will approach the topic differently. If almost nothing has been done, position yourself as breaking new ground. You will still need to discuss what work informs your own. (Note – this section will eventually form the basis of your Annotated Bibliography.)
The Markets section makes clear who you see as the target audience for the piece. This is where you discuss discipline and venue.
On the first draft of your proposal your Outline/Research Plan will necessarily be somewhat sketchy. Subsequent drafts will allow you to elaborate. For now though you should have some idea of the direction you’re heading in and how you plan to get there (methodology). This includes the types of materials you plan to use (films, videos, tabloid magazines, websites, fan communities, media texts), people you plan to interview, surveys you plan to take - whatever you feel you need to do to make an effective argument. A sense of the structure of your paper would also be useful at this point. Again, many of these elements may very well change as you work out your argument.
Finally, the question of length. Expect your proposal to be at least four pages - and likely longer. The more detailed and thorough you are at this point, the easier it will be to write your paper.