Once, at a literature festival, Shashi Tharoor claimed that people can only learn to write “by writing. Keep writing and keep doing it.”
The underlying meaning of this statement is that you cannot improve writing and research habits overnight. Or you need not enroll in a course to learn to write better.
Imagine you are reading papers, learning vocabulary and grammar, and even doing a course on writing research. But you have not started writing anything yet. You cannot expect to grow your writing habit this way.
However, most of us find it difficult to take the first step with everything. When it comes to a skill like this that requires consistent effort and practice in this age with multiple distractions from technology and devices, it is even more formidable. But it is absolutely normal.
You can simply start writing. Just follow some strategies and tactics while you write or research to improve.
Eight Strategies To Build Stronger Research And Writing Habits
There are no fixed rules or guidelines for building better research and writing habits. The more you practice it, the stronger your skills get naturally. And with that, you will eventually know which strategies work for you.
Nonetheless, the following tactics and practices are impactful and help everyone scale their research and writing skills.
Incorporate AI In The Research Process
Most people consider AI a threat to building better writing habits. But if you can learn the effective and positive uses of AI tools and incorporate them into your research and writing habits, they can be very impressive and resourceful.
Some AI writing tools or detection tools like Perplexity or ProAIchecker for students are especially designed for academic purposes. So, these kinds of tools are totally reliable to incorporate into academic writing.
Apart from AI and plagiarism detection, these tools are helpful in writing the very first draft. But instead of making them write your papers directly, you can make the best use of them if you can divide your task and bring the tools into the loop for a specific purpose.
You can use their assistance to make essay structures, brainstorm for effective arguments and ideas, and research for a literature review and supporting data and claims. This way, you can develop your own critical thinking ability as well during research.
Start With A Proper Question
A common mistake we all make when we start writing the first draft is that we start aimlessly with scattered ideas. We start with a broader research question, which can make your paper shallow and your research work disorganized.
If you do not have a proper research question, you can not research properly. Or you will not be able to get proper research findings. You will feel directionless in the end.
Instead of that, work on your research questions first and narrow them down. Spend some time on scaling your thesis statements, ideas, and questions. It will make your research work way easier, giving you a proper purpose and direction.
Break Down The Question Before Research
As we are talking about preparing a proper research question, another thing you should keep in mind is that you should break down your question before starting research.
For concise and fruitful research work, you should find different aspects and subsections of your research statement. Then make queries and questions based on the subsections.
Instead of searching with a full question, look for secondary sources against the subtopic and queries you prepared.
Thus, you will find very specific answers, arguments, and scopes to add more angles and new arguments in your paper.
Evaluate The Source
Evaluating the sources you are getting information and ideas from is a crucial part of your research work. You must ensure that the secondary sources are credible and trustworthy enough. It will make your own paper credible too.
The first thing to check is the author and publisher of the paper. Secondly, you must check if the data the paper provides is accurate. Thirdly, check the date of publication of the secondary source and ensure that it is updated. And finally, ensure that the paper is relevant enough.
If you can ensure these criteria, you can be sure of its authenticity and credibility to enrich your paper and support your statement.
Structure, Revise And Edit
These three are the most important tasks to do to improve your papers. The more you work on structuring, revising, and editing your essay, the more concise and coherent it will become.
Before starting to write, make sure you have a viable and organized structure or outline. The structure works like a foundation of your paper that gives you direction.
After you are done writing, always revise the whole essay, no matter how lengthy it is or how proper it looks. Each time you go for a revision, you will find a glitch or scope for improvement.
Finally, edit the paper where needed. Remove the sections that are unnecessary or do not support your research statement. Add a deeper argument or interpretation from another perspective instead.
Prioritize Clarity Over Fancy Words
For academic writing specifically, most students and scholars make another mistake, which is putting fancy and sophisticated words to make the whole paper look ornamental.
While doing that, the paper loses clarity and its core purpose. But for a formal academic paper, it is more important to make your readers understand your statement, arguments, and claims. Also, you must make sure that all the research questions are addressed and answered.
So, always prioritize making your statement clear over sophisticated or complicated words and language.
Stay Focused On Your Topic
Since you go through multiple secondary resources, interpretations, and explanations at a time while doing research work, it is likely that you will get distracted and diverge from your core topic.
But you must make sure that you stay focused on your thesis statement and aligned with your research questions throughout the whole paper.
For that, you can keep the research questions and thesis statement at the top of your paper and frequently check them. Or you can write them on a sticky note and keep them near or attach them to one side of your screen. This way you can avoid slipping off your thesis statement.
Write Everyday
Last but not least, developing a writing habit is a matter of practice. You cannot grow it out of the blue within yourself.
So, if you want to develop a good writing habit, try to write five pages or write a little about different topics every day. You will struggle at first or may not find it fruitful or see any development. But you will see the positive outcome gradually. So, give it a try.
Final Thought
As Tharoor rightfully claimed, to learn to write, you have to write. So, start writing from somewhere. It may be the introduction or fragmented ideas and points. Once you put ink on your paper, you will surely finish it.
However, for a clearer and more beautiful outcome, you have to work on your writing skills and learn how to do research work effectively, which will actually bring you some impactful outcomes.
The above-mentioned strategies and tactics will surely work if you can follow them regularly with perseverance while you are writing.