How to write a research paper:
Pick a topic
Then find at least 6 different sources for that topic. Easy way is to search google books or type .pdf after your source.
Scan through your sources, read the shortest one. Make sure that you want to keep that topic (I usually realize I want to do something more specific).
Open up a word document and make your works sited page. Then how ever you need to site your sources, make a list of those so something like (Johnson, 2008) so that every time you put in a fact you can copy and paste that at the end of it.
Then make your document how ever many pages it needs to be(i usually just hit return a lot).
Next, think of something you can focus on for every 2/3s of a page, so if you have 4 pages, you should have about 3 sub topics, an intro and a conclusion 12 pages would be somewhere around 14 topics an intro and a conclusion. When I have a longer paper, I always try to make at least one of those topics a real world example. I wrote a paper about forensic toxicology so I researched 2 cases and described in depth what was done in those cases.
Then put the topics in the best order you can. Usually a history or discription, real topics about the subject, then an example.
After you have this set up in your document start with what ever is first on your works sited. Read the entire thing and every time you find something you can use, rewrite the fact under what ever heading it goes under and copy and paste the siting after it.
Continue this with all your sources.
Then re arrange them so they flow.
I usually end up with about 8 pages of facts for a 12 page paper. Re write it into sentances and you should end up with about 10 pages or a little more. Then read what you wrote, and write your introduction and then your conclusion.
It ends up being almost no original though, but it gets so heavily supported with facts and examples that I have never not gotten an A. I pretty much leave all my opinions to the conclusion.
But I can get through a 12 page paper in about 4 hours this way. The longest part is finding and reading the sources.
