What Makes a Good Topic for a Research Paper?

What Makes a Good Topic for a Research Paper?What makes a good topic for a research paper? This is a question I am asked quite often and as I'm sure you can imagine, the answer can vary widely. So, let's start at the beginning. There are two basic types of topics, descriptive and analytic.One of the things that makes a good topic is the sort of research paper that it is going to be. In my experience, this really isn't a matter of choice, the first example should always be 'descriptive' as it will be used by judges and you have to consider what you say and what your subject is. The second option would be 'analytic' but it is far easier to describe, particularly when writing an academic paper.Describing is the most flexible type of research paper because there is no strict rule about what to write and when, it is a matter of feeling. By combining two very different sentences, for example a sentence that describes the paper as 'reading a thesis' and one that describing it as 'writing an essay', you can keep your topic as 'reading a thesis' and still use the more attractive grammatical style. This allows you to immediately see whether you've written something that is worth reading or not and it is also easier to remember too.If you want to compare a sentence research paper with an essay, the difference is more subtle than that, but they both are similar in the way they need to look at a given point of view. Although they can both have plenty of grammatical complexity, in the case of an essay you are supposed to give a bit of an argument and also feel that you are advancing your understanding of the subject matter.The one thing that makes a good topic for a research paper is the prospect of attracting attention. What makes a good topic for a research paper for example, is not what the topic itself is but how much you can be seen as advancing the topic. When I was a student in college, I used to spend a lot of time reading The Stranger, which was a highly regarded un dergraduate textbook on Philosophy, so I don't really know what makes a good topic for a research paper at all, just that the one I chose looked great on my report card.I do think it is important to realise that a research paper can only ever really advance your knowledge base. As a reader, I love to find new ways of reading and as a writer, I can only always see new ideas and ways of expressing them. It is very hard to improve your knowledge base without going beyond the boundaries of your existing skills.Once you are able to write your research paper, you need to think about what the topic is for, does it make a good topic for a research paper or do you want to go down a more traditional route. For the most part, if you have a good idea and it fits in with the topic, then I would say go for it. Writing a research paper is not easy, you are in effect starting again from scratch but it will be worth it as the results can be highly rewarding.