Choosing a topic.

This advice won’t be subject specific, because so often people will feel that advice about an imaginary business paper can’t be applied to their real communications paper. If you have questions about how this advice might be applied to a specific subject, feel free to drop a note in our ask box!

You might feel like you have nothing to work with in choosing your topic, but you likely have many important pieces of information. Begin by considering the subject, the class, the instructor, and yourself.

The subject. Sometimes, you can start to feel like a subject has become completely closed off. You’ve gotten so accustomed to thinking of it in a classroom or while staring into a book, it is easy to forget the many ways it interacts with the wider world. Pick something you are interested in or browse the news and think carefully about your subject interacts with that. Let’s say football is something you are interested. You can write about the economics of building new stadiums, the business of running a for profit team, the communications structures involved in getting needed press coverage, the popular narratives of football, the modes of advertising associated with football in a specific media, the history of the photography of football, the relative absence of other art forms dedicated to football, and much more.

The class. Think about things that the class has focused on, what writers, researchers, topics, etc., were the focus of the class. What do they have common and where do they intersect with the world.

The instructor. There may have been times during the class when you wondered how many times the instructor could mention X or how many lectures could be devoted to Y. The subjects, researchers, and approaches that your instructor enjoys can be a great guide to choosing a topic. Be careful, however, what your instructor is interested in is also probably something your instructor knows a lot about. That means you have to be prepared to take the subject seriously. Trying to blow it off will probably blow up in your face. Don’t be afraid to talk directly with your grader about the subject and ask for guidance in choosing sources or approaches.

You. You surely have interests? Be wary of picking a subject you love. If you think of yourself as Doctor Who’s number one fan, it’s probably a poor choice for school work because you may not be able to be sufficiently critical. However, even if you are the number one fan of something, you can choose aspects of it that are unfamiliar to you. For example, if you love a certain TV show, writing about the story or characters might not be a good subject, but you may enjoy researcher its various international markets, writers, production style, the science or its science fiction, etc.

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