You have a great video idea in mind, you sit down ready to get into it, start researching, and suddenly it’s a month later and you haven’t started on the script yet. If that sounds familiar, you are not the only one.
Of all the analysis channels I’ve worked with, around 2 in 5 say that research is a massive time sink in their video production pipeline. Scale that up to the 60 million YouTube creators out there and that 2 becomes around 17 million people with the same problem.
I’ve found that is mostly caused by two key factors:
- Being really passionate about the video topic to the point where you’re getting lost in research spirals.
- Not knowing what to research.
The key is to give yourself certain guardrails with the goal of becoming confident in the topic of your video, but not an expert and a big part of this goal is structuring your research for success.
1. Scope Creep
If you’re self-employed, creator or otherwise, you’ve likely heard of the term “scope creep”. This refers to a client asking for work that is beyond the scope of the project or contract. But when you’re a creator, you’re the client and the employee so you need to look out for your own scope creep.
How do we do this? By defining this scope before we start researching and setting healthy boundaries.
2. Defining the Scope
So what do I mean by “defining” the scope? Well it’s really just about narrowing your search field. Depending on your process, this scope will be more or less flexible.
If (like me) you’re an exploratory researcher that likes to learn a bit more before locking an idea in, defining the scope will help you find more nuggets of information whilst saving more time.
For this approach your scope is defined by your basic idea. How many topics are you going to cover? Break them down into bite size pieces. If, for example, you’re researching female characters in the Dark Souls trilogy, then you may split the idea into:
- Female representation in video games
- Dark Souls development history
Once you have one or two really strong sources, then you can start to see the connections between them and maybe this list becomes:
- Female representation in video games
- Representation of female NPC’s in Dark Souls
- Dark Souls development history
- Role of female developers (if any) and target audience.
Continue this process until you find a thesis that you’re really interested in exploring further and that brings a strong argument to the video. This helps you get into productive research spirals making sure you are digging deeper into the topics you are supposed to be researching.
3. Guardrails
Okay we have a thesis. Following this example, let’s say we went with “female npc’s in the Dark Souls trilogy embody motherly traits because they mechanically exist to aid the male protagonist.”
Great. This idea becomes your biggest guardrail because you’re going to research what you need for the video, not to write a whole academic dissertation (unless that’s your specific content niche).
But how do you figure out what you need for the video?
4. Start structuring even if it’s vague.
If you’re struggling to figure out what you need for the video it is very helpful to step back and draft a rough story progression or structure. Why should you do this now? Well you have the background knowledge from your broader investigation and have a strong thesis.
You’re probably already synthesizing analysis, but now it’s time to get it on paper and see how you’re going to get from point A to point B. This will make the gaps in your research stand out because you’ll quickly figure out how much you actually know and how confident you are about arguing a certain section.
5. Focus on the foundations.
Even with all this prep, you might have to google a specific date or detail while you write. That’s fine. What we’re trying to avoid is big research tangents in the middle of drafting because it stops your brain from having to context switch between “research” and “writing” modes which can be a big blow to your productivity.
So really focus on the core things you need to know to argue this video to the best of your ability. Do you need specific information on the specific Souls titles you’re going to cover? Maybe interviews with developers?
The idea is that instead of going to Google, you can go to your research document (check out an example here) in the middle of the draft where the information you need will already be summarized and organised for you to grab and go.
6. Being confident.
Like I said at the beginning, a big part of research is feeling confident enough to write the video from a position of authority. You don’t need to know everything, but your audience is trusting you to know enough to deliver a clear and accurate argument.
The only times I’d consider a mid-draft research session appropriate is if you’ve run into a big inconsistency or realise one of your sources isn’t accurate. Why? Because in a world of misinformation accuracy matters. So do the work you need to feel confident, but not so much work that you never get to show all of your beautiful analysis to the world.