How to Write a Research Paper
Step 1: Pick a topic
Every student has to write a paper or essay at some point. And that paper usually has a word count or page length attached to it.
How do you write content that is actually important to your argument, instead of repeating yourself, using every synonym in the thesaurus, rambling, and using every wordy phrase you know?
How do you meet a length requirement without resorting to BS?
Well, there are a number of answers, but the first and most important one is to pick an interesting and specific topic.
If you don’t care about your topic, it’s going to be extra painful to research and write about it. And if your topic is too broad, you’ll spend forever trying to figure out where to start, getting lost in research, and writing broad general statements.
Brainstorm Topics/Ideas
What interests you? What are you passionate about, whether it’s love or hate? What do you want to learn more about? Someone once told me that a good research topic is one that you’d happily have a conversation about for at least 30 minutes.
If all else fails, pick a topic related to your future career (or a future career that you think might interest you). That way, you either end up with information that will likely help you in future classes/jobs, or you realize that you actually hate everything about your future job while you still have time to change course. If you can’t stand the thought of spending 4–6 weeks researching and writing about your future job, but you think you’ll be happy spending 30–40 years doing that job…there’s a problem.
Here’s a typical list of broad topics that students come up with when asked to write a research paper:
- Police brutality against minorities
- Climate change
- The media
- Gun control
- Wage gap
- Immigration
- Suicide
- Autism
This list, and the following examples, actually comes from one of the classes I taught, where we did this as a class to practice. It’s great to do in a group, because you get more ideas and questions that way, but you can do it on your own if needed.
Narrow Your Topic
List everything you can think of about the topic. This can be a free word association, too. If you get really stuck, enlist Google.
Police brutality against minorities
- training
- body cam
- protest
- racial profiling
- punishment towards police
- profiling minors
Gun control
- politics
- age limit
- teachers having guns in classrooms
- gun rights
- training
- gun safety
- backgrounds
Narrow Your Topic Again
Pick the issue that most interests you and examine it. Ask questions, like how does this work, how does it affect me, other people, the world, the economy, etc. Look for problems, for things that don’t make sense or don’t work.
Police brutality against minorities: body cams
- shouldn’t be turned off
- should be required
- record audio and visual
- should be used in court cases
- should be automatically backed up to a secure server where they can’t be erased or altered
Gun control: teachers having guns in classrooms
- where to keep it so it’s easily accessible but not to students
- training
- what kinds of schools?
- private schools vs public
- $
- who qualifies? Background checks?
- mental checks
- parents who homeschool?
- what type of gun?
And Again
Each time you narrow your topic, the goal is to flip the topic and examine it from as many angles as possible. This should help you to zero in on what interests you the most.
Police brutality against minorities: body cams: used correctly
- how to make sure body cams record useful information
- how to make sure body cams are tamper proof
- how to keep cams from getting covered or blocked
- make it a law
- use fines
- how to get police chiefs/commissioners on board
Gun control: teachers having guns in classrooms: training
- how much training?
- how to pay for it?
- condition of being hired?
- how often does training need to be renewed?
- who does the training?
Refine Your Topic
By now, you should have a more specific area of interest, which you should be able to turn into a working thesis statement. Obviously, this statement, and even your whole opinion, might change as you do your research. That’s okay, you just need a place to start.
Police brutality against minorities = Currently, body cameras aren’t doing enough to prevent police brutality; stricter training and requirements need to be put in place to ensure body cameras are being used as intended.
Gun control = While arming teachers might seem like a solution to school violence, the cost, time, and ethics of just training teachers makes it an impractical answer.
There is still a lot of information to cover on this topic, despite the fact that it has been narrowed down repeatedly. Now that you have a clear opinion about something, you can get started looking for information to both support and oppose your stance.
Next week: How to research
