Research Questions and Topic Refinement

Writing a research paper can be very overwhelming. In fact, simply the idea of a research paper can feel overwhelming. Why? Probably because your topic is too broad. When you first begin to plan a research paper, the whole world is at your feet. You could research and argue literally anything. The trick is to narrow it down. Start by brainstorming a few topics that interest you. Once you have a good list, go through and think of arguable questions for each one. This will help you to determine which topics will work the best. I did this with a tutor at the Writing Center, and it really helped me. Once you've chosen a general topic, do your best to narrow it down even more. The smaller your topic, the more successful you'll be. This is because you won't get as easily overwhelmed by the topic, and because you'll have a specific direction to take your research. If your topic ends up being too small, you can always broaden it again.