All the research has been read, and notes have been taken. Now it’s time to organize and write the paper.
#1 Organization of the Notes
Organization of your writing can be either be organic or formatted. If your assignment had specific bullet points that must be addressed in your paper begin with those points. In a large area, a clean tabletop or even the floor sprawl out all your index cards. On either, post-its or other notecards write the points that you need in your assignment. Sort the notecards by the categories into piles. In my experience, if given specific guidelines and a particular length of the page it’s essential to stick to the instructions. Several professors will dock points if a premise wasn’t discussed or the range was either surpass or not reached. At this point don’t worry about organizing the individual piles and categories just yet. Cards that do not seem to fit in a group can be put aside, I keep them until an outline is typed and printed.
The organic formulation is where you don’t have defined talking points and a general assignment. When all the cards are spread out on the surface, you will begin to see categories of the information. The cards will start to sort themselves. Label the piles by the central premise or subtopics. The more organic formulation of organization you will find a collection for all the card, but you don’t have to use them all in the paper.
In either method, you will have a separate stack of source cards.
#2 Outlining
Now, arrange index cards in piles by categories then you can start to organize and arrange by topics. When the items are arranged in the proper order, then hold the cards within each pile. Organize the information, in an order that you find to make sense. Start with primary or general data first, then once you build up the topic, it can begin to become more advanced or more complicated. If you notice cards with similar information, keep them together. When you cite this information in the paper quotes from all the sources. When the topics are organized, and the right flow of the paper is formatted, it’s time to type out the outline. The outline setup and format can be one of several ways. I use the Roman numeral for the main ideas, capital alphabetized letters for subcategories and numbers for individual points type out the citation as you would when writing your paper. If the source cards are number place them in order, so it’s easy to reference the source at your fingertips. At the outline stage if you need to add any other personal notes put them into where they should be placed in the paper on the outline.
When the outline is all typed up, I will usually put my reference page at the end. Alphabetize the sources and type them up.
#3 Write
The actual process of writing along with the outline will be much more comfortable. All your ideas are organized and in order. Utilizing the framework, you will not get stuck, and the actual act of writing will flow smoother. The outline is not carved in stone. If there is something you feel will fit better elsewhere or omit altogether, that is entirely in the hand of the writer. The citation is right at your fingertips and easy to insert into the paper. No more trying to remember where the information came from or if an idea was yours or something you read. The works cited page is complete and can be copied and pasted from the outline.
#4 Proofread, Edit, and Reread
The one thing that I never did throughout high school or even my early college experience was actually proofread or edit. I think it stems from not really learning the process in school. Once I’m done with a paper, I put it to the side of my desk for at least 24-hours. Reading out loud will help you catch grammar mistakes and typos. At times I will copy and paste passages into a software that will read to me. Not everyone is going to be great at proofreading, but listening will let you identify what sounds wrong, too complicated, or wordy.
The end product will be a well-researched paper. My method is not for the student who waits until the absolute last minute. I know a few people who somehow wrote a 20-page document in one night. This method is for students who plan ahead and schedules their projects. But this has proven to work great for research papers.