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How to find a good research question and locate secondary literature as a novice academic writer

Academic writing is challenging to teach—especially when you try to explain it to someone who doesn’t yet have a frame of reference. Reflecting on my own experience, many writing tips I heard early on felt meaningless. It was only through practice—writing articles, submitting them, and receiving feedback—that I really learned.

Getting Feedback

Receiving feedback was tough, especially at the beginning. It was often obvious to journal editors that I was a novice and that my submissions weren’t ready for publication. Unfortunately, in many cases, the feedback wasn’t detailed enough to be genuinely helpful. Comments like “this does not work” or “this sounds like the work of a student” were common—but they never explained how to make it better or why it sounded like student work. Joshua Schimel explains why novice writers often sound like students and, more importantly, how to fix it—something I wish someone had explained to me earlier.

Honestly, it’s frustrating how little formal education there is on academic writing. From my experience, it seems that students at Ivy League schools often get much better instruction. For example, I know that Harvard’s History department clear materials explaining basics like what a literature review is or how to pose a historical research question. Having had access to resources like that would have made a big difference.

In contrast, most of the writing “training” I received focused on trivial details, like how to adopt a specific citation style for a particular class. It felt like a complete waste of time—especially now, when formatting citations can easily be automated. Learning how to use a citation style is fine, but it’s not the same as learning how to write academically—and unfortunately, that’s what most of the formal instruction covered.

How to Formulate a Good Research Question

Formulating a strong research question is one of the hardest parts of academic writing. It requires being aware of what’s going on in your field. Honestly, I only started feeling confident about creating good research questions after completing my PhD—which is, of course, not very helpful if you’re still learning how to do it earlier on.

Since I’ve thought a lot about this, here’s an overview of what I usually teach my students:

  1. First, you need to come up with a potential topic.
    It should be something you’re at least a little passionate about or interested enough in that you’ll enjoy working on it. But it also needs to be something you actually have the skills to tackle. A common mistake is choosing a topic that’s way too broad, which even very good students struggle with. Initially, it can really help to simply work with a topic suggested by a professor.
  2. Locating good secondary literature is another challenge, especially early on. At first, Google can be both a help and a hindrance—it sometimes hides more obscure but important articles. Over time, you’ll get better at knowing what keywords to use and how to refine your searches. With practice, finding useful resources becomes much faster and easier.

A Simple Strategy for Narrowing Down Your Topic

If you’re starting from a seminar title, here’s a simple trick:

  • Start with the seminar title.
  • Add a specific time period.
  • Add a specific geographical place or similar (or sources to look at)
  • Add a method or approach.
  • Add a goal or research aim.

By fleshing out the topic systematically like this, you make it narrower and more manageable. A well-formulated research question needs to be focused enough that you can actually answer it in the space you have.

However, this exercise really isn’t enough to generate anything that can actually get published. This is only a topic. An actual scholarly article needs more than a topic: you will need an argument grounded in the relevant scholarly discourse around your topic. A topic alone also doesn’t provide the necessary guard rails to steer you in the right direction. Having a topic is great but before starting to write, you will need to come up with an argument. You do this by finding literature, absorbing the state of research around your topic and identifying where it’s lacking. Then you ideally fill that gap with your work/argument. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this is advanced stuff. (For revising your first draft notes into an actual publishable article, read Revising your draft into a publishable journal article in 12 weeks [Book Review]).

Finding Good Literature as a Beginner

Here’s a practical approach:

  • Start with a handbook or a solid overview book that’s relevant to your topic.
  • Look at what that handbook cites—this often leads you to the core sources in the field.
  • Identify three to five key sources, and build from there.
  • Know that not all citations are equally valuable, especially in niche or under-researched areas.

For example, when I first started working on alchemy, I struggled a lot because I had very limited guidance from mentors. If you can, accept help from professors who are experts in the field—it will make your search for literature much more efficient. They can save you hours of frustration. If you’re on your own, expect the first stages of research to feel slow and messy. That’s normal. If you’re working independently, exploring both multilingual sources and different research traditions can also open up new perspectives.

Developing Better Tools for Outlining

We developed an article outline template that might help you start, though it’s more of a brainstorming tool than a full article outline. I’m currently working on a more practical version based on lessons from Joshua Schimel, aiming to help with real article structure, not just brief abstracts or project proposals (that are more promises about work to be done rather than reports on results).

Applying Schimel’s principles and trying to move away from binge writing is still a work in progress for me. In one of the recent articles I drafted, even though I prepared with a new excerpting strategy, I struggled to turn the excerpts into a coherent first draft.

I eventually reverted to a minimalist outlining strategy inspired by Cal Newport:

  • First, do the reading and select only the most important sources.
  • Next, write a broad outline made up of simple headings.
  • Then, insert references and citations under the appropriate headings.
  • Finally, write your text around the structure of references, not the other way around.

Forget about the perfect first draft

During excerpting, I personally generate way too much text (even using ChatGPT to clean it up slightly), which isn’t really usable for the final draft. That text (which I call pre-draft material) is useful for thinking, but not for writing. Other people have the problem of not generating enough text. I think the root of the problem may be similar: Tying to write a perfect draft from the start.

Expecting to write clean, polished prose in the first draft is unrealistic and counterproductive. Nobody can do that. Polished writing is always the result of many rounds of editing. So don’t freak out when your first draft sounds awful. Most really good texts are based on a not-that-impressive first draft. (Although, to be honest, if a draft is deeply structurally flawed, it may be easier to re-write it from scratch rather than fix it.)

Final Thoughts

Learning to formulate research questions and find good secondary literature is a slow and messy process at first. But over time, with persistence and practice, it becomes faster and more intuitive.

Formulating a good research question and finding quality literature is a process you have to grow into. It gets easier with time, practice, and persistence. Don’t get discouraged if it feels overwhelming at the beginning—that’s completely normal.

Most importantly: don’t aim for perfection early on. Focus on finding a manageable topic, getting familiar with the discourse, and building from there.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sarah Lang (July 26, 2025). How to find a good research question and locate secondary literature as a novice academic writer. Epigrammetry. Retrieved March 15, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/14fnv


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