19 Simple steps to Write a Research Paper
HOW TO WRITE A RESEARCH PAPER
- Write a Research Paper On Your Own.
- Download research papers on your topics.
- Watch Youtube videos on the topic.
- Read library books about your topic.
- Print out important material.
- Discuss with your PhD supervisor.
- Write short notes before hand.
- Collect Relevant symbols.
- Get ready with 10 headings.
- Expand each heading with 5 subheadings.
- Write each paragraph relevant to topic.
- Write minimum 3000 words in total.
- Finally, start writing abstract.
- Start writing Introduction.
- Write down conclusion
- Format research paper as per journal guidelines.
- Cite properly all in text citations and block quotes.
- Give at least 15 to 20 references/ bibliography.
- Proofread research paper.
Do it yourself every time to make writing easy
The easiest way to write a research paper in 12 steps is to go online, find one of the myriads of essay writing companies. And pay a lot of money. But if you get caught, you can be in a lot of trouble, be expelled or suspended and be branded a cheat.
The easiest, best and safest way to write a research paper is to do it yourself. Not only do research papers get easier to do after the first one, but you may also find out that you had a lot of fun doing it.
The important factor in doing your research writing yourself is that you can take pride in your accomplishment. You achieved something that a lot of other people fail to do properly. That makes writing worth the effort.
Find the right tools to help you write research paper easily
You do not have to do the research paper in the above mentioned 12 steps all alone. There are plenty of top tools to help you write and get your grammar and spelling perfect. Grammarly is one such tool and it will give you real-time correction and you can save proofreading time.
If your teacher tells you to use a specific citation format, then you can turn to Purdue Owl to get all the instructions you need to make your citations meet your teacher’s requirements.
These are just two of the tools you can find on the internet to help you get your research paper done. Getting help is not wrong and it will help make your research writing go a lot smoother and faster.
Just one word of warning, spelling and grammar tools are not perfect. They do get certain words and language nuances wrong. You will still need to double check their assessment before deciding your paper is spelling and grammar perfect
Don’t wait till the last minute and rush writing
If you get a month as a deadline, do not wait till there are 6 hours left to go. If you wait, you will be stressed, tight, and probably won’t be able to think clearly as you are too worried about meeting the deadline.
Delaying in writing your research paper more than the given 12 steps only makes writing a lot harder to do. What you want to do is start as early as possible after the paper has been assigned. This allows you to stay relaxed and keeps the stress away. Also, you do not have to write the whole paper at once. When you start early, you can do it in sections, making sure you do not miss out on anything important.
In addition to those advantages, when you start early, you have time to go over your material to make sure there are no mistakes your professor will catch. You have the time to clean up your citations, work cited page and even correct spellings your grammar tool missed
Then, when you start early, you can do better research and find great material that will support your point. Leaving things to the last minute will show in your paper as it will be filled with mistakes, bad quotes, and look rushed.
Know your guidelines and steps of writing
One of the key things you need to do that helps make research writing easier is to know your guidelines. This means you need to read and understand them before you get to work.
You do not want to miss a guideline as that will influence the content of your paper and your results may be a lower grade. Make sure to read all the guidelines your teacher has placed in the assignment.
If you do not understand some of them, then ask your teacher. You will not get hurt by asking your teacher for clarification. Clarifying their instructions to you is one part of your teacher’s duties.
Once you know and understand the guidelines, then you know what to do. Knowing what to do makes any research paper or other tasks easier to do. It will also help you get a better grade, but that is dependent on your content as well.
Think of good ideas that are easy and fast
The better the idea the easier it is to write research paper in 12 steps. It is also easier to find top quality material to use in your essay. You can get both great and bad ideas through brainstorming.
The best and easiest topics to write on are broad ones. This allows you to create the subsections and lets you write to your strengths. For example, if your topic is your favorite pet, you can write subheading like how he played with you and your family, how he woke you up in the morning to go outside, his personality and so on.
The key to writing is to write what you know. That piece of advice should help you eliminate bad ideas from your brainstorming session. If you do not know it, pas son it for those you do know.
This trick makes writing a lot easier to do as you already have the information in your head and you know where to look for more information to help strengthen your paper.
Just do not get unrealistic, absurd or too comical when coming up with brainstorm ideas. Stick to your topic and your guidelines.
Ask the right questions while writing
Knowing what to ask helps you target key information and point you in the direction your paper should go. Asking the right questions leads you to good information. For example, if you are writing on a Paris vacation, some good questions would be:
l What famous person has visited the city
l Where did they go
l What did they see
l Where is the best restaurant to eat at
l What type of food is served
l How expensive is that food
The questions you ask should be directing you to answer the main inquiry- what should you know about the topic. Once you answer that question, the others will fall into place and you may end up with more material than you need.
When that happens you will have the difficult task of editing out the information that is not pertinent to the topic. Getting the right information is the key to writing a good research paper easily.
One way to help you get to the right questions is to keep breaking down the topic till you can’t ask any more questions or they become irrelevant to your topic.
Do your research work the systematic way
Once you get your questions answered then it is time to do the actual research. The questions should lead you to the resources you need to find the content you can use to describe or investigate your topic.
The trick here is to find credible sources. You can’t just use any source as the information you find in them may not be accurate, or competent. You want the best sources that deal with your topic and provides you with the information you need to make sure your content is sound.
The sources you use should also make you look like you know what you are talking about. But you have to be careful when you turn to those resources. Your professor may give you a restriction on which ones to use.
Those restrictions may limit you to using only those books or [periodicals that were written in the past 5 or 8 years. Or you may not use sources like Wikipedia or similar ones as their information is not always credible and changes. Your teacher may say for you to use scholarly peer review works only.
This is why knowing your guidelines is so important. That is where you find these restrictions on your resource material.
Write a good thesis statement to your Research Paper
A thesis statement is telling your teacher the point you are trying to make with your content. It will also direct your research and keep you on track so you do not lose your way as you write.
The thesis statement will also help you edit out content that is not pertinent to your topic. When you are in doubt about your content, just ask the simple question, does this help prove or support my point?
If not, then remove the content. Remember the body of your research paper must support your thesis statement but do not get repetitive. Once you made your point move on to another one.
Nothing is gained by saying the same thing over and over. Then your conclusion should talk about what you have already said. You do not need to put new information in the conclusion unless your topic requires it.
You can just summarize what you have already said and that makes writing a research paper a little easier.
Write a good outline To Your Research Paper
Like a thesis statement, a good outline helps you focus your thoughts and gives you great direction. With an outline, you know already what content should go under the subheadings. This speeds up your writing process and helps you get the content you need.
Plus, it is easier to write because you already know what you want to say. With a good outline, you also know where to put your research citations. Then once you place your-text citation or footnote, make an entry in your bibliography or works cited page.
This only needs to be done once per source, even if you quote from that source more than once. This takes the task off your mind and allows you to concentrate on your content making writing a lot easier to do.
You can always double check your citations after you finished writing your paper with your citation source to make sure you got the format correct.
Proofread Your Research Paper
Nothing is perfect in this world. That is why you need to proofread what you wrote. You will catch several mistakes each time you go over it. Also, use the spell and grammar check tools again to make sure you caught all your language errors.
Proofreading may sound like a boring task to do but it is more of self-protection, You get to correct your errors before your teacher does and assigns you a lower grade than you should get.
Or you can have someone else read it over and let them catch those mistakes you may have made. Another pair of eyes looking at your paper from a different perspective and asking yo key questions will help you improve what you have written.
How to download research papers
The best way to download research paper in your related topic is to go to Google Scholar. Here one can find many research papers. Just type in the search engine your topic. There would be many paper showing up. Just dowload them into your computer and read them at least 5 to 10 papers. This way you will get ideas to write research paper.
Watch Youtube Videos
These days watching youtube videos will be of great help to write a research paper. Many are turning out to youtube for uploading education content instead of writing on websites. It is becoming highly popular search engine now a days. There will be plenty of teachings that are related to your topic. Just watch them to get general idea about your topic.
Reading Library Books
Library is the oldest technique of getting knowledge. Even today one cannot deny it amidst many technical things out there. Going to libray means, you have peace of mind to read. This is one of the important benefits than any other learning mode. There is a room for serenity of mind. This way you will learn better and good and best.
Print and spiral bind research papers
Many save online digital content on to their computers. This will not motivate us to read. So always take a pring out and get it spiral binding. This way it will be a big reminder to read. They are infront of your eyes and you will feel somehow to read in the free time.
Discuss your topic with Supervisor
Now after completing the steps that I have been mentioning above, slowly move and set up a meet with your supervisor. Discuss your topic with your supervisor. Make a voice recording of the suggestion given by your supervisor. This is how you will not miss a single word of genius from your supervisor. The points that are given by your supervisor will be very helpful to include in your research paper writing.
Cultivate the habit of short notes
During the process of writing research paper, one must strictly cultivate the habit of taking short notes of imporatant ideas and points from all the primary sources and secondary sources. When you gather information, later when you seriously start writing research paper, ideas will be very easy to gather.
Collect relevant Pictures
You may include some symbols and pictures in your research papers. Make sure you go to google images and get quality resolutions. Be aware of copy rights here. That is enough.
Time to write chapters of research papers
After all this pre-preparation, you must be ready now to start writing research papers. Now to try to prepare skeleton for your research papers. Firstly choose the number of chapters. ( For long research papers, you need chapters but they are not required for short papers.) Secondly write the headings for chapters. Thirdly, write sub headings if any.
Expand Headings and Sub Headings
Now that you are ready with the names of headings, decide the number of words for each heading . I suggest you to write 500 words for each heading. Keep at least 10 headings through out the research paper. This way your reserch paper will be about 5000 words. This is enough for publication in a reputed journals.
At last write abstract, introdcution and conclusion
Based on your body and heading, prepare abstract with keywords. Abstract is noting but the outline and main points of your research paper in 250 words. Write introduction now. Introduction means you will introduct the main events happeing in research paper with little explanation. Finally the conclusion is about what you attained, the final result of your research paper and out come.
If one follows my above simple steps, one can write a good research paper fast.
A final piece of advice
There is actually no short cut to an easy way to write a research paper. There is no magic formula that will make your writing task simple and take less time. You need to do the hard work involved in writing to make it easier for you.
Anyone who is telling you there is or that you can skip a step or two is not telling you the correct way to write a research paper. They are giving you misinformation that will not lead you to success or the best and easiest way to write your term paper.
Doing the writing right the first time also saves you time and a lot of work. Plus, the easiest way to write a research paper is giving yourself a lot of time to complete it. A good research paper is a lot like Rome. It cannot be built or written in one day.

