The Art of the Research Paper

Does anyone really enjoy writing research papers? When I was younger, I used to dread the thought of writing anything longer than 2 or 3 pages – or requiring more than a superficial analysis of a 1-diminensional topic. However, as I gained more experience in writing formal research papers for college, and eventually for work, I began to appreciate the process. In many ways, I had begun to associate such writing efforts with “art”.

When I speak of “art” I am not implying that that the effort is entirely creative or abstract, but I am suggesting that there are several layers to writing a successful research paper. As with any form of art, there is the technical layer of which one must master the basic tools and skills to accomplish the task at hand. But then there is the second, more complex layer which involves creativity and free-form association. As with trying to tie-in a factoid or quote from a scholarly source for a research paper, the artist must tie-in one’s own life experiences, observations or reference images to form the painting or sculpture in the artist’s mind. It is that melding of what we know, what we learn and what skills we accumulated to create something new that has so fascinated me about writing research papers. From that perspective, one could are that undertaking a research project can be as fun as creating a work of art that one can hang over the fireplace and point to with pride (hopefully).

With regards to the research project for this English course, the same underlying sense of purpose and art still applies for me. However, that is not to say that I had not been confronted with multiple challenges. Among the most difficult to overcome has occurred during the preparatory stage. The question of what topic to writing about has not been trivial. If my writing experience has taught me anything, it is that one cannot “bullshit” one’s way through a 6+ page research paper because there just aren’t enough “generic” phrases and filler words available in most people’s writing toolbox. Picking the right topic is crucial for me. And to help me achieve that I ended up writing a rough outline of possible forms my research project could take for each of the proposed topics in the RP handout. It has been a time consuming process, but the end result will be worth it as I now know that I have enough to say about the topic! More importantly, I believe the quality if the paper will be improved because I am more excited about writing on the selected topic.

The other area of potential difficultly has involved in-text citation and selecting the right reference sources. Poorly selected sources can derail even the best efforts to form a logical argument. My worst fear is usually being unable to support a claim made earlier in a long research paper – or to have my main argument lose steam mid-way through the paper for lack of supporting evidence or focus. Again, to help me overcome this I have relied heavily on the preliminary outlines created for each potential topic. Doing so has allowed me to “pre-visualize” the structure of the paper before committing ink to paper. Hopefully, the net result will be an effortless first draft, or a nightmare assignment from hell.