7 Steps to Completing Your Academic Research Paper in a Day

If the deadline for the assignment is tomorrow and you haven’t even started writing your paper, you shouldn’t panic. Although it won’t be easy, you may be able to complete the essay on time. The step-by-step guide offered below will teach you how.

1. Prepare and focus: 30 minutes.

You need to prepare your workspace to make sure that you have everything you will need for work. This way, you will not get distracted every five minutes to search for a textbook or a pen. Preparing your mind is no less important. You have to focus and set your brain to the “work mode”. If it helps, you can turn on some music that will help you get in the mood for writing.

2. Develop a strong thesis statement: 45 minutes.

A thesis statement is the most important sentence of the entire paper as it must summarize its main idea. If you manage to develop a truly good thesis, writing the essay will be much easier as this sentence will guide you so you won’t waste any time on unnecessary research. If you don’t have much experience in this area, read some helpful articles that describe how to create a strong thesis statement.

3. Write a catchy introduction: 15 minutes.

An introductory paragraph must be concise and to the point. In this section, you need to present your main goals and hint at some of the strongest arguments. You don’t actually need to write a summary of the paper as this will make it unnecessary for people to actually read further. Your main goal at this point is to catch the readers’ attention. Try to do this by including an interesting fact or a catchy quote.

4. Defend your thesis and develop your arguments: 30 minutes.

Think of how you will prove that your thesis is correct, this is how you develop the arguments that you will present in the paper. Be sure to take your opponents’ arguments into account.

5. Research: 2-4 hours.

Use your arguments as a guide for the research and don’t waste the valuable time on browsing the sources for some more interesting facts. Focus on finding the evidence that will support your point of view.

6. Write the first draft: 4 hours.

Put all your thoughts to paper, even if they seem jumbled and the essay ends up being bigger than it should.

7. Revise and edit: 2 hours.

Rework your initial draft until it becomes a decent paper. Start with the content and then move on to the style, format, grammar, and finally spelling mistakes.