I guess the main thing is to make sure you're not just "regurgitating" material from your lectures/textbooks/etc. You shouldn't just be merely presenting factual information, you should be using that to make some kind of point. You actually want to be making an argument, which is at least somewhat novel in your interpretation of it. So plan what your overall argument is going to be, break it down into separate chunks needed to make that argument overall.
This will also then dictate the structure of your essay, which you should outline in your introduction (e.g. "I/this paper will argue that Z, by establishing X then considering Y and W interpretations applied to X, rejecting W because A, from which we can conclude that in fact, Z"). You then want to be linking your paragraphs to each other and the overall essay question, signposting where you are going with the argument as you go through the essay.
Something that we were advised was to put our secondary sources "in conversation with each other", so as to avoid having a given reference end up just standing on its own as a sort of factual statement but without any analysis. What would one academic (or whatever) make of a different (perhaps later and non-contemporaneous) interpretation? Try and argue on their behalf, for or against the different interpretation. Also if you have two different authors writing on different but related topics that relate to your overall argument, try and link the two and show how each strengthens the others argument and both come together to form some point in your overall topic.