I'm trying to write an essay for my Modern-period humanities class (1200 words, 1500 max) and I'm having trouble narrowing the scope of my paper to something that makes sense. My current thesis is "if the Western European Enlightenment had not happened, then the US would not have established a system of democracy" and my goal is to use the writings of Enlightement thinkers such as rousseau and locke to back up my thesis. My professor likes the idea of this paper and thinks its very interesting, but thinks the scope might be too broad (as my outline was approx 700 words). I have been scratching my head all day trying to figure out how to narrow the scope down but I am very bad at writing concisely- any advise? Also, any suggestions for how to structure the paper? I'm struggling on that as well