As you think about a topic, it may be helpful to try and use division and classification. The shorter your paper, the more specific the topic will need to be, so you will need to subdivide the too-general topic into something you can manage in the page length. The longer your paper needs to be, the more general your topic can be, allowing you to cover more ground. Division can also help you think about organization in long papers. If you divide the topic into several subsections, perhaps each subsection can be a single paragraph or a single page of the longer essay. The chart below may give you some ideas.