Before you develop your research topic or question, you'll need to do some background research first.
Some good places to find background information:
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Contains many core topics, each with an overview (objective background / description), point (argument), and counterpoint (opposing argument).
Now that you've done some background research, it's time to narrow your topic. Remember: the shorter your final paper, the narrower your topic needs to be. Here are some suggestions for narrowing and defining your topic:
Describe and develop your topic in some detail. Try filling in the blanks in the following sentence, as much as you can:
I want to research ____(what/who)____
and ____(what/who)____
in ____(where)____
during ____(when)____
because ____(why)____.