The length of the paper. The topic you choose may be closely related to the length of the assigned paper. After all, the amount of information that you can cover in ten pages will be vastly different from what you can cover in three to five pages. While it might be reasonable to discuss America's involvement in World War II in a ten page paper this topic would be way too broad for a three to five page paper. For a shorter paper you can narrow this topic down. For example, in a shorter paper you could discuss a particular battle that involved American forces.

The amount of time you have to complete the work. Plan and budget your time carefully. If you only have a short time to complete your work it is also quite likely that you will only have to write a short paper so the suggestions made above still apply. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that if you only have a week to complete a paper it is unreasonable to attempt to write a paper of any length about the Civil Rights Movement. If on the other hand you have an entire semester to complete the assignemnt this could make for a very interesting topic.

The resources that are available to you. While you might be quite interested in writing a paper about the behavior of beetles, if the materials that you need are not readily available then you will find it difficult to complete your work. We will always make an effort to acquire the materials you need but if time is of the essence you may need to rethink your topic.