Where to begin? You may be an eager researcher. If so, inspired by your thesis, you have already begun writing your paper. If, however, you still feel overwhelmed and are staring at a blank page, you are not alone. Many students find writing the first sentence to be the most daunting part of the entire research process.
Start directly with your outline. Your outline has pretty much been started for you. The required discussion topics leave room for you to "personalize" your outline and provide for a cohesive discussion paper encompassing those topics.
1. If you have not already done so, group your note cards according to topic headings. Compare them to your outline's major points. If necessary, change the outline to correspond with the headings on the note cards.
2. If any area seems weak because of a scarcity of facts or opinions, go back to your primary and/or secondary sources for more information or consider deleting that heading. Your outline should have approximately the same amount of information in each area.
Once you have written a working outline, consider two different methods for organizing it.
a. Deduction:
1) A process of development that moves from the general to the specific. Deduction is the most commonly used form of organization for a research paper on literature.
2) The thesis statement is the generalization that leads to the specific support provided by primary and secondary sources.
3) The thesis is stated early in the paper. The body of the paper then proceeds to provide the facts, examples, and analogies that flow logically from that thesis.
b. Chronological Order:
A chronological organization is useful for a paper that explores cause and effect.
