Specific aims - the page everything hangs on
Lesson 1 of 6 · Grants, talks and posters
1 · Learn the move · Recursive + iteration
The aims page is one page carrying five moves: the opening that earns attention, the gap stated so a tired reviewer feels it, the objective or central hypothesis, the aims themselves, and the payoff. Drafting it whole produces mush; the working method is recursive - one element per pass, the rest held fixed. Pass one tightens the gap paragraph. Pass two makes the aims independent, because an application where Aim 2 dies with Aim 1 is a flaw reviewers name early. Pass three aligns the payoff to what the aims can actually deliver. The model iterates language and structure; the science, the feasibility claims, and the preliminary data are yours and enter the page as [NEEDS: ...] until you supply them - an aims page with invented preliminary results is not a draft, it is a liability.
Here is my aims page draft: [paste]. We iterate one element at a time, my choice of order. This pass: [gap paragraph / aim independence / payoff alignment]. Rules: hold everything else fixed; propose two rewrites of the target element with one line each on what changed; check aim independence explicitly - state what happens to Aims 2 and 3 if Aim 1's hypothesis is wrong; leave every preliminary-data slot as [NEEDS: ...] for me.
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
Your aims page has been through four drafts and it reads worse, not better - each rewrite touched everything at once. Aim 2 quietly assumes Aim 1 succeeds, the payoff paragraph promises translation the aims never set up, and the deadline for internal review is in five days.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
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