To be a student means to learn a lot. Also, it means to read a lot, write a lot and sometimes forget that you have other things to be done. Indeed, students do have to write a lot, and it’s hard to find balance between their personal lives and academic achievements. Let’s have a look on how to write a research paper without sacrificing your personal life in the name of science.
What to Start With
First of all, you have to find a topic you feel interested and curious about. One of the most common mistakes students make at this stage is choosing a topic they feel is okay, but are not passionate about.
Take it from us, you will get bored writing the third page of your research paper. The second most common mistake is ignoring an outline. Few students know how to write an outline for a research paper, and fewer actually do it before writing the work instead of after it.
Secrets of Outlining
So, you have chosen a topic and discussed it with your teacher. What should you do next? What about how to write a research paper from scratch? What do you start with? These and many other questions are solved with a clear and precise plan. Don’t be lazy, spend a little bit of your time for planning the process of writing—it will save much more time for you in the near future.
Usually, an outline consists of three parts: the introduction, the main body and the conclusion. The main body is divided into smaller chapters depending on what you are writing about. Another useful thing to do is to make short notes for what you are going to write about in each of the chapters, and where you can find this information (even with page numbers, this saves a lot of time).
When you finally have a basic idea of how to write an outline for a research paper, you need to get some practice. Imagine you are writing research about your favorite movie or book. What would you focus on? How much of your research will be devoted to the author, writing background, and how much to the book itself?
Writing Tricks
We strongly advise you to start writing for the body of the research, especially those parts that interest you the most. This will help you to get into the “working” mood, and it will be easier to write the parts you don’t feel so passionate about. Some students try to write the work step by step, thinking this is the best way of “how to write a research paper.” Actually, this is not a very effective approach, since some parts that are placed at the beginning of your research paper can actually be written only after you have finished the work. This is, for example, the abstract part. The abstract is a summary of your whole research paper, so how can you summarize something that hasn’t been written yet?
Start with gathering information. Save everything that looks more or less relevant for you research. The more information you manage to gather, the better it is for your work. Once you’ve got plenty of facts and info (two to three times more volume than your research should be), start critically analyzing the information. Cut some things that look superfluous, and condense two sentences out of a paragraph. In essence, try to economize words. But remember not to sacrifice readability for shortness!
And finally, if you still have no idea on how to write an outline for a research paper, remember you can always look for a cheap research paper writing service to do the work for you.