How to Find a Topic for a College Paper

Video Transcript

"I'm Kari Wethington for expertvillage.com. Today we are going over how to write a college paper. You are going to want to find a topic and you don't want it to be too broad. You want it to be a little bit specific so it can really tell a great story and make your readers stay interested throughout the whole paper. Your professor has probably given you a general topic say American History, but you are not going to want to focus on just one event in American History that is too much. If you did, the American revolution there is many books devoted to that so maybe you can find a specific person, place or even within the American revolution that you can focus on. Even from there focus a little more. Another example is European castles that is so broad there is no way you can fit that into one paper. Maybe you can focus on the castles of Scotland or maybe the castles of certain region of Scotland and the agriculture of those castles. If you can find a more narrow topic you are going to be able to find ideas and your writing will just be more lively because you can get a little more passionate about it especially if you find a narrow topic that is something that you are interested in."