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My first research paper—for my high school AP English class in 1982—still gives me nightmares. The process of typing out an enormous paper was foreign and intimidating. My topic: J.D. Salinger. I pulled an A, but not without pulling an all-nighter and much of my hair out.
My last research paper—for my English 316 Technical Writing class—still makes me smile. I'd written dozens of papers by then, and my topic was near and dear to my heart. I covered different singing styles, and for the oral presentation, I briefly presented each type, discussed an artist who used it, and then sang a piece using the style. Great fun and a straight A.
Research papers shouldn't be painful. Just follow the logical steps, one at a time, and you'll be done without much drama. (Unless your topic is drama, which is OK, too.) Here are the steps I recommend to write a stellar research paper:
- Carefully read professor's directions
- Select a topic
- Find relevant book and media sources
- Find relevant periodical sources
- Find internet sources
- Organize your ideas and quotes into an outline
- Write a first draft, using the appropriate formatting
- Add footnotes
- Create a bibliography
- Revise the draft
- Set it aside for a few days
- Proofread and correct for final draft
Certainly each step involves significant work. But broken down into bite-sized pieces and tackled one at a time, each step should be enjoyable and interesting.
There are many quality resources at your disposal. My favorite formatting guides are: The Chicago Manual of Style and Franklin Covey Style Guide for Business and Technical Communication. Harvard has a great basic page full of grammar tips to keep your content readable.
Best tip: make sure to give yourself the needed time to accomplish each step. Leave enough time to let the ideas gel and to be able to set your paper aside so you can read it from a fresh viewpoint.
Worst tip: A reader recently asked me what I thought about free online essays. Her question was from a moral point of view, but here I'd like to address it from an educational one. The way I see it, you're spending an awful lot of time and money to become educated. If you just pay someone else to do your work for you (even by traffic or advertising or whatnot), then why bother?
Alison Moore Smith is a 61-year-old entrepreneur who graduated from BYU in 1987. She has been (very happily) married to Samuel M. Smith for 40 years. They are parents of six incredible children and grandparents to two astounding grandsons. She is the author of The 7 Success Habits of Homeschoolers.
Love the first step! That’s very, very important. I learned that the hard way when I had to write a research paper and had to re-do it because I didn’t follow the instruction.
Sheila, that can be the killer, can’t it! The old adage “measure twice, cut once” can apply to almost everything we do. Before you climb the ladder, you need to make sure it’s leaning on the right wall! 🙂
If you write a paper for the first time, you will have a lot of questions about it and you need constant guidance about it. It is great if you have someone at hand to ask all the questions — a dad or a mum, a teacher or even a senour student.
Thanks for the tips which are great for students that need to write a paper for the first time and they can be really puzzled how to start all this work.
I graduated a few years ago, but would like to make a comment. There are great new tools out there that can greatly help students. Check out Evernote. Evernote allows you to keep all of your notes in one locations, you can clip websites, documents, pictures, etc. I use the free version everyday at work to keep notes.
The first step that you have mentioned is one of the most core step that people should follow when they are working on a research paper but unfortunately most of us forget to do such planning before writing a Research Paper =)
Thanks Anyways for sharing these Useful Guidelines~!