With my several years and counting of schooling, I have had to write my fair share of papers. While some have page number requirements (I’ll discuss this on another day), the most that I have written have a “word count” requirement. And, I have been told that I have a “gift” for writing papers almost to perfection. But, in my mind, it’s also a curse. Because, I can procrastinate until the very last day and then write a stellar paper. My anxiety goes thru the roof, but as of date, with doctoral papers even, it has not failed – knock on wood. I know, I know, I should not torture myself this way. But anyway, back to the topic at hand: the word count and how to achieve it. With me waiting until the due date to even attempt to write majority of my papers, let me share with you how you can achieve the word count – hopefully without feeling overwhelmed. Please Note: If you are not a procrastinator, like myself, please perform these steps in your process during a timeframe that makes you feel comfortable. The below steps are how I achieve my goals in writing papers.

Step 1: Once you have the topic, go to your school library (most are online), and start pulling articles related to the topic. You can do this by searching for sections of the title at a time or looking for synonymous words. Depending on the number of required references, always retrieve one more reference than the required number in case one of the references is a dud.

Step 2: Once you have your articles, read the abstract to determine if it may contain information you can use for your paper. If the abstract seems suspect, go to the conclusion of the paper and do the same (see if there is information in the conclusion that pertains to your topic). If you have a dud article, go back to step 1 and replace this article.

Step 3: Once you have solidified your article choice, read the requirements for the paper. Usually, the teacher/professor has outlined some key points that they want you to hit on. If so, those are your headers. (i.e. Teacher/Professor may state: Consider the below questions – What factors positively influence a person’s political stance? What factors negatively influence a person’s political stance? Are some of those factors similar for both sides?) Your headers: Intro, Positive Factors of Political Stance, Negative Factors of Political Stance, Political Stance: Positive and Negative Factors Compared, Conclusion.

Step 4: Now that you have your headers, take the entire word count requirement, take the number of sections and then divide. That’s right, DIVIDE. So, for the example used, you have 5 sections. Let’s say the word count is: 1725 – 2000. (I always divide by the lower number – lol). So, in my case, I would take: 1725 / 5 which equals 345.

Step 5: Now, you have broken down the sections and the word count. You know that you need a minimum of 345 words per each section. Take each section and write them as small discussion question responses. At the end, you can add in where needed for word count.

So now, you have a paper that you have written that is not so overwhelming – hopefully. Breaking it down into sections helps ease my mind and allows me to write stellar papers. Hopefully, this helps you too! 🙂