Make a list of potential research areas that interest you. Even if you have to research a topic within the parameters of the course or assignment, there are bound to be areas that are more interesting than others. List the general subjects that most appeal to you.
Break down the general subjects into more specific subheads to make the preliminary research more manageable. For example, if you are taking a course in media, a list of research areas could include "Television" as a potential topic. Potential subheads in that topic could include types of television shows, television advertising or the popularity of television.
Ask questions about your subtopics. Focus your questions on how or why. For example, "Why is reality television so popular?" or "How has television affected movie attendance?" Spend some time on this step, and write down every question you can think of; sometimes it is a seemingly insignificant detail that leads to the best paper topic.
Conduct some preliminary research to evaluate your questions. Discard questions that you can answer too easily, are common knowledge, are too impossible to prove or disprove, or lack any authoritative sources for your research.
Make a list of questions that you want to answer. Ideally you should have three to five potential research questions, although you may need more depending on the assignment parameters.
Develop potential answers to the questions to use as working hypotheses. These hypotheses are your potential research topics.