Co-taught by an instruction librarian and a Writing Center coordinator, this lesson supports history students in exploring a topic and preparing for subsequent research and writing. The first and primary piece of this lesson centers on a topic speed dating activity that encourages students to look beyond the most obvious elements and narratives of their topic and seek nuance and unique perspectives through guided discussion with a peer. This is followed by a class discussion on the role that divergent thinking plays in developing a research question and some time for students to draft their own potential research question. Finally, the session concludes with a brief overview of what comes next in the research and writing process, explaining how the research question leads to a working thesis and outlining the next steps in finding sources.