Writing a research paper can be a challenging ordeal, especially for busy students like you. The good news is, there’s a time-tested series of techniques which have been scoring your peers high marks with their professors for many decades. Although there’s no singular trade secret to great paper-writing, you can reliably count on the following concepts to guide your path to success, so grab a chair, brew some coffee, and relax as we share literary knowledge!

Study the material thoroughly

One of the more common mistakes with these projects is the belief that skimming source material is a more effective method of controlling one’s time. The idea behind this philosophy is simple – by powering through the books, poems, scientific studies, what-have-you, and then returning to the source periodically, one can get a head start on the action of actually penning the paper. It makes sense, to a point, but the truth of the matter is that most of us learn things much more completely when we take the necessary time to immerse ourselves in what we’re reading.

This has the added effect of requiring fewer return visits to the source material, meaning that in the end you’re probably saving just as much time by thoroughly grasping concepts the first time around as you would have had you merely skimmed!

If possible, use a highlighter

That said, you’ll still need to consult your material here and there as you write your essay, especially if you’re researching complex series of experiments and such. If permissible, you should mark various key phrases with a highlighter, and if you really want to organize the source, consider multiple colors of highlighter. We all know that one student who has sixteen of these things laying around; he or she is diligent in marking every other line. While you don’t need to be quite so prolific in your highlighting, you should at least have a couple of colors on-hand always!

Enhance your outlines

Run-of-the=mill outlines are a proverbial dime a dozen, but custom-tailored outlines can be priceless. Spend some time investigating various styles of outline and find the one that connects with you the strongest. There are plenty of suggestions on the construction and application of these handy organizational tools all over the net; you can find here a veritable ton of tips and tricks toward that end.

A truly great outline will do half the work for you before you even begin your paper. It will help you to shuffle your thoughts about functionally, so that you will clearly recognize patterns which can be transformed into full-bodied paragraphs.

Write what you know

Our last recommendation is that you always prioritize the concepts you most fully understand over the ones which might still seem a bit hazy to you. One of the things that mortifies some students about the act of starting essays is that they recognize that there is still so much to learn about the subjects they’re working on.

But relax! This is perfectly natural. Even the world’s top scientists will often admit there’s a great deal they still don’t understand about the things they’ve poured their professional lives into. The solution is to maximize depth and detail on the concepts you do grasp to cover the weaknesses in other areas. Writers have been doing this since Babylon, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Write what you know and you’ll never need to worry so much over what you don’t know!