The first step to creating any research paper is defining the subject. Your topic should be large enough to find enough data so your conclusions is not based on opinions and conjecture. Get your instructor's approval before beginning the project in earnest.
Much of your research will be based on studies that have been published in peer-reviewed scientific or academic journals. Encyclopedias, reference books, and the Internet can supplement those sources. In some cases you may need to do your own experimentation or, in the case of literary research papers, add your own analysis and evaluations. Librarians are the experts in where to find the sorts of information you need. Ask them for help and follow their advice.
You will have to document the sources you have relied upon, and the MLA provides a set of specific guidelines to how they should appear in the final product. That will include footnotes, endnotes and parenthetic notes in the body of the article. Take detailed notes, including the publication's and authors' names and the volume, issue numbers and pages where the information appeared, as you do the research. Always enclose quotes with quotation marks and include the attribution in the text, whether it's a substantial block or just a few words.
Organize the information in a logically way so the conclusions flow naturally from the source material. Outlines or detailed notes on file cards are both good tools for developing your presentation. File cards let you organizing the information in different ways easily.
Papers should be printed out on standard 8-1/2 by 11-inch paper with one inch margins on all four sides; text double-spaced with half-inch indentations at the beginnings of paragraphs and quotes indented one inch from the left margin. Do not use a separate cover page for the title and number each page including the first on the right side, a half-inch from the top. Tables should be labeled "Table" with an Arabic numeral at the left-hand margin; figures are labeled and numbered, with captions below them.
Include a Works Cited section at the end of the paper, listed alphabetically by the author's last name, without honorifics before the name (like Ms. or Sir) or degrees and affiliations after them. Parenthetic notes or in-text citations will allow readers to find the details in the Works Cited. If there is no author's name, alphabetize by title.