How to effectively embed text evidence.

Here’s a terrible way to do it.

Internal and external conflicts affect your life.  “Sure I want to go outside.  Every kid wants to go outside.  But it’s safer to stay at home.  So I mostly hang out alone in my bedroom and read books and draw cartoons.”  Internal conflicts make you  want to stay inside.

Here’s a mildly better way to do it.

Internal conflicts make you  want to stay inside.   This is from Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. “Sure I want to go outside.  Every kid wants to go outside.  But it’s safer to stay at home.  So I mostly hang out alone in my bedroom and read books and draw cartoons.”  He wants to stay inside because he has internal conflicts.

Let’s make it better than this. (Just a little bit.)

Internal conflicts can cause a person to detach himself or herself from others. This is from Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. “Sure I want to go outside.  Every kid wants to go outside.  But it’s safer to stay at home.  So I mostly hang out alone in my bedroom and read books and draw cartoons.”  He wants to stay inside because he has internal conflicts.

Let’s make it a lot better.

Internal conflicts can cause a person to detach himself or herself from others.  In Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,  Junior chooses the safety of his bedroom so he doesn’t have to deal with the struggles he’s feeling inside.  “Sure I want to go outside.  Every kid wants to go outside.  But it’s safer to stay at home.  So I mostly hang out alone in my bedroom and read books and draw cartoons.”  He loses himself in his books and his drawings as a way of dealing with his troubles.  Unfortunately, this also means he has difficulty connecting to other people.

This ISN’T better.

Internal conflicts can cause a person to detach himself or herself from others.  In Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,  Junior chooses the safety of his bedroom so he doesn’t have to deal with the struggles he’s feeling inside.  “Sure I want to go outside.  Every kid wants to go outside.  But it’s safer to stay at home.  So I mostly hang out alone in my bedroom and read books and draw cartoons.”  In this quote, he loses himself in his books and his drawings as a way of dealing with his troubles.  Unfortunately, this also means he has difficulty connecting to other people.

“In this quote” doesn’t make it any better.

Here’s a LOT better.

Internal conflicts can cause a person to detach himself or herself from others.  In Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,  Junior chooses the safety of his bedroom so he doesn’t have to deal with the struggles he’s feeling inside.  He, “wants to go outside.  But it’s safer to stay at home.”    So instead of connecting to people and talking to people about what’s going on inside his head, he “mostly [hangs] out alone in [his] bedroom and [reads] books and [draws] cartoons” (Alexie 24).  He loses himself in his books and his drawings as a way of dealing with his troubles.  Unfortunately, this also means he has difficulty connecting to other people.

What makes this example best is that the language of the book becomes part of your words in the essay.  It isn’t just stuck in there.