Many young researchers are finding it difficult to write the contribution to knowledge of their work because they don't know where to look in their work to get the idea of what to write. Your suggestions will guide many.
This is a classic question. Most novice researchers are driven by passion and interest (this can be a topic, a problem , a question) and by some big idea or hunch rather than by what's going on in a particular discipline or field, the current debates, the controversies, the next new thing.
The former has the potential of pushing a discipline or field in new directions or trying out new and creative research methods. The latter is the slow and often tedious kind of knowledge building based on a systematic and detailed review of the relevant literature.
If getting published is what it's all about, then your contribution has to be situated within what's going on right now. Research is a social practice and its regeneration and change depends on how successive generations re-invent the practice. Think of doing research and publishing your work (findings) as part of an ongoing conversation among experts, many of which see their roles as those of gatekeepers. If your work is done in isolation, it's like you interrupt their conversation with some irrelevant remark.
Better to pay your dues, earn your spurs first, at least, if you want to join that particular conversation. You can always try and define a new field, a new area of significance.
I should think that technically the novel contribution (i.e. what is "new") about a particular piece of research is the findings (contextualised, of course, in the body of knowledge built up by previous research). Even if one's research consists of a review of the literature, there will be "findings" from that review -- the literature is not the novel contribution, the researcher's selection, synthesis and analysis of it are.
One might also use novel methods, and refer to that as a contribution of a particular study, although the utility of using novel methods still relates to what they enable one to find.
Adding to Antoon De Rycker 's reply, the novice researcher may want to seek supervision/mentorship from a more experienced researcher and obviously, an authority in their field of interest.
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