CHAPTER 1

Understanding Generic Structure Logic

Like most people, I like stories, so let me begin by telling you a very shortstory—after which I'll ask you several questions.

Paula was hungry. After she entered and ordered a pastrami sandwich, it wasserved to her quickly. She left the waitress a big tip.

* Where was Paula?

* What did she eat?

* Who made the sandwich?

* Who took the order?

* Who served the sandwich?

* Why did Paula leave a big tip?

How is it that you could answer those questions rather easily even thoughnothing in the story explicitly provides the information necessary for youranswers? Because you have a schema for the concept of "restaurant."

Schemas are knowledge structures that you have built and stored in your memoryas patterns, as analytical frameworks. Schemas represent generic concepts suchas restaurant or airplane or house. Each schema has "slots" that exist in anetwork of relations. Your schema for restaurant may have slots for "ordering,""eating," "tipping," and "paying." Your schema for house may contain slots for"family room," "kitchen," "living room," and "bathroom." A slot for "homeoffice" is also possible, but probably not for "boardroom" or "conference room,"since such spaces typically are not found in residences. Therefore, you don'texpect to find a boardroom or a conference room in someone's house.

You also have schemas for different kinds of texts, and these schemas createexpectations. In a novel, for example, you expect character and plot andsetting. In a particular type of novel, such as a spy novel, you may expect thatthe hero will be betrayed and captured, only to escape and triumph. In a eulogy,you expect some account of the deceased person's character and accomplishments;in a personal letter, some account of your friend's life and feelings; in asermon, some moral based on a religious belief. If the sermon consisted solelyof an analysis of price-earnings ratios or bills of materials or variousstrategies for penetrating new markets, your expectations would be denied, andyou'd be suspicious of the speaker's competence and reliability, maybe even hisor her sanity.

Proposals and other business documents also carry with them schemas and sets ofexpectations. If I asked you to submit a proposal to me, I'd be surprised if thedocument contained findings, conclusions, and recommendations. These are slotsI'd expect in a report, not a proposal. Potential clients like me, then, havecertain expectations, and as a writer, you're at some risk if you don't meetthose expectations. If your reader is in a proposal-reading situation, you'dbetter deliver a document that fits your reader's proposal schema, not theschema for a report or a eulogy or a novel.

Your schema for a proposal also has slots, and those slots make up what I call aproposal's generic structure. No matter how different one proposal may be fromanother, something generic makes them both proposals, and that something istheir generic structure.

The Slots in a Proposal's Generic Structure

Most of your proposal opportunities exist because I, your potential client, havean unsolved problem or an unrealized opportunity. Therefore, your primary taskis to convince me, both logically and psychologically, that you can help meaddress my problem or opportunity and, in competitive situations, that you'll doso better than anyone else.

Your entire proposal needs to communicate that message in one seamless argument(which may happen to be divided into sections or even volumes for myconvenience). Your argument is suggested by the following propositions, each ofwhich is preceded by the proposal slot that contains it. (See Figure1.1.)

Slots Speaking to Slots

Although the preceding statements might suggest that your proposal's argumentflows only one way—from top to bottom—the argument should be sotight that the logic also can flow from bottom to top:

    These are the benefits or value you will receive
    considering the costs you will incur
    given our qualifications
    for performing these methods
    that will achieve your objectives
    and therefore improve your situation.

Now, I've never seen a proposal organized that way, but however the proposal isorganized, every generic structure slot needs to "speak" to all the others. Noslot exists in isolation: Each contributes to your communicating the proposal'sprimary message. In later chapters, I'll show you specific techniques forassuring that each slot in your proposal speaks to every other one.

Slots Are Not Necessarily Sections

You've probably noticed that I've been referring to OBJECTIVES, METHODS,BENEFITS, and so on, as "slots," even though many proposals might designatethose parts of the proposal by using section headings of the same name. I'vebeen calling these elements slots rather than sections because in any givenproposal it is possible that:

* No slot could be used as a section heading. That's the case if youdon't use headings in your document or if your headings are different from...