Well, several years ago when I first had to submit an abstract, I did a bunch of web searches on writing abstracts and then kind of went from there. The basic thing to remember is to essentially boil your paper down do a couple of paragraphs. If it's an as of yet unwritten paper, you can at least summarize where you think the research is going to go. But You shouldn't indicate that the abstract is of a work in progress or that you merely think the research is going to head in a particular direction. Yes, everyone knows that most things that get abstracts submitted haven't been written yet, but it's much more convincing to have a short and forceful statement of, "The evidence shows X" than to have a "Well, I'm looking into X, and I might find Y, but who knows, really?"
You've probably written it by now, but in case you haven't, here's what I've figured out for me: The best method I've used is to explain the paper to someone in a related subfield (so for my, that's usually Sarah or Joel) really briefly and then summarize the conversation in writing. It will give you a sense of how much background needs to go into it and since they're in similar fields, they'll ask questions you may not have realized you were supposed to answer in writing.
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You shouldn't indicate that the abstract is of a work in progress or that you merely think the research is going to head in a particular direction. Yes, everyone knows that most things that get abstracts submitted haven't been written yet, but it's much more convincing to have a short and forceful statement of, "The evidence shows X" than to have a "Well, I'm looking into X, and I might find Y, but who knows, really?"
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