Advanced Higher English

hi, I'm taking advanced higher english this year and I acctually have the worst teacher for the subject, she only goes through poems for our literary study and just gives us past papers to do that she wont mark she will just tell us they're good enough. She is extremely lazy and it's actually a widely known fact that even other schools know how notoriously bad she is at her job which I know sounds horrible. Still, she's only just now told us when our dissertations are due soon. Still, she doesn't know when and I have no idea how to even start it I've read two books for a comparative dissertation on "The picture of dorian gray" and "Frankenstein" but now that I'm actually trying to research it they don't seem to have enough commonalities I was hoping you would give me advice on what to do I'm actually so lost. I would love to be able to get an A which is starting to feel WILDLY out of reach I've asked so many times for help from my teacher but she just keeps telling me to write a first draft and even though the problem is I have no idea how. I was thinking of my thesis being something along the lines of --A comparative literary study examining the portrayal of influence, leading to the loss of morals, and the consequences of this in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture Of Dorian Gray” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”.-- I actually don't even think both books explore this all that much. I thought that you could tell me how you went about researching your books? if there was a particular method to it that might help me I also don't know how to reference or what they're even used for as every time I ask my teacher she tells me to google it which hasn't proved successful yet. I also wanted to know if there was a structure you followed to gain the most amount of marks like a PEEL paragraph something like that? or something that ensured you got the right amount of marks needed for each paragraph? and how you got yourself to write your dissertation? and how long it took you to write the first draft? maybe even how you went about editing? as I know for a fact my teacher won't give me any tips or notes, I'm so sorry for the amount of questions I have as I'm really struggling if you answer this thank you so much.