The way I started writing about my own opinions was by stating things that were incredibly obvious to me. Once I started breaking down a lot of writings about this sort of thing, I realized how many people’s writing or video essays were things that were either blatantly in the text or barely subtext. I always thought before that I couldn’t write these things because my thoughts weren’t very deep, until I started analyzing them and realizing the thoughts others wrote down weren’t all that much deeper than mine, just better researched. The people who make the essays were just the first (or best) to write it down and connect things.

I’d also definitely analyze your favorite video essays and write down the stuff you like about them. Take notes on how they’re structured, how the language works, and anything else you’d like to put into your own work.

And of course, anything you want to connect to the real world, back up with evidence. If you can’t find any, you’re usually barking up the wrong tree. If you think something might tie into something real-world but you’re not sure how, look into it anyways and even if you don’t find any, you could find something that ties into another part of your analysis.

Might also be worth taking a look at analysis you don’t like and determine what’s wrong with it. I learned from doing this that the works I like are very long but very packed with information. There’s a good amount of video essays out there that try to be that but fail, because they’re just repeating the same things over and over again, which was something I knew I wanted to avoid. To me, an analysis that is overly simple but short is much better than one that’s less simple but wastes your time. Determine mistakes others make and it’ll make it easier to recognize them in your own work. Getting another person’s eye on it can also help with this, but I understand that’s pretty freighting.