I’m actually in the same boat right now! I’m working on a thesis as well! Although, I’m not quite to the point of writing my senior thesis yet. I’m currently taking a course where I’m writing a “mini thesis”- (25-30 pages) in length for preparation for my future senior thesis. What I’ve learned so far from helping professors with various historical research projects is that you should ask an appropriate amount of research questions about what you’re researching. So with my length for my thesis my professor has a guideline for us to only have 2-3 research questions. For example, if you’re researching African Americans in the 19th century you should focus on certain aspects such as gender roles, slavery, laws, politics economics and etc., but you should not focus on all of these aspects and continue to narrow things down. So with my example I could narrow it down to something like: How laws in a certain state like South Carolina passed continual slavery laws that further oppressed female slaves from the years of 1861-1863 and how the laws oppressed them in 2-3 ways- these would be the research questions . Keep in mind I have not researched South Carolina slavery laws in depth so I’m not sure if this would make a good question or not. This leads me to my next point! Formulate a sample thesis statement about 2-3 sentences typically and let your primary and secondary sources lead you to your research rather than keeping strictly to what you have in mind. Find sources first then figure out research, especially if you’re able to pick out and formulate your own research (which I assume and hope you are!) So, in short my advice is remember to keep narrowing down topic, don’t focus too much on what your topic question and research questions are until you find sources that you think you want to use, and remember to only ask research questions that will match the length of your research. Also, good luck and have fun researching!

Abbot Gleason wrote a book called "Totalitarianism" (1995, Oxford) that was a great source for a graduate paper I wrote on American Exceptionalism and Social Revisionism and each powers respective view of totalitarianism. I recommend it because you could use it as a source for any paper about the totalitarian. It gives a history of the use of the term and how it's meaning and social perception has changed over time and how it was redefined and rebranded over the years with various coded language ( i.e. communism).