I sure don't get much of a holiday with you diligent Year 11's floating about the place, huh?
Jks jks, the remainder of this year and the summer holidays are great times to tidy up things in preparation for Year 12, and quote integration is a big one.
Although there are a few notable right and wrong ways to embed quotes, it can help to think of them on a spectrum from 'totally not part of the sentence' through to 'so smoothly blended it's like a delicious blended smoothie.'
On the 'wrong' end of the line you have things like
Richard idolises the idea of winning. "Luck is the name losers give to their own failings." This quote shows that he cares about winning.Totally clunky, right?
Then you have things that are grammatically integrated, but the fact that they point out 'the character says:
this' makes them a bit laborious. These can be okay in moderation though:
Richard idolises the idea of winning, as is evidenced by his declaration that: "luck is the name losers give to their own failings." A little better, but you don't want to have to point things out that way every time. The above format can be really useful for Language Analysis, however; the fact that it allows you to comment on the language a bit (ie. his
declaration that... his
glorification of... his condemnation towards...) and there's a good opportunity at the end of this quote to start unpacking the words themselves.
Next, you have quotes that are fully integrated -
the key difference b/n the orange and the green is that with this one, I could remove the quotation marks, and I wouldn't be able to tell what was being quoted. You can use a blend of these two styles if you want, but this next sort is usually the quickest and most efficient:
Richard has a quixotic faith in the promise of winning and he completely dismisses "luck" as a word which "losers give to their own failings."This seems to be what you're doing at the moment, so this next option is probably going to be what you can start implementing.
To take your example:
Richard suggests "luck" is an excuse that "losers give to their own failings", but achieving success is through your will "to win". This demonstrates that Richard believes achieving success or submitting to failure is solely dependent on the amount of effort you invest.
This is getting across your point clearly, but notice how you've got one sentence that is just summarising what Richard says, and then the second sentence is where you analyse it by saying 'This demonstrates...'? This can easily be combined into a more efficient bit of analysis using the magic of
NominalisationTM - now available in 4 easy payments of $19.99Really, that's just a fancy word that means 'noun-ification' where you take a verb you're using in a summative sense, and turn it into a noun so you can analyse it.
So here you've used the verb 'suggests,' which we'll turn into 'suggestion' in order to get:
Richard's suggestion that "luck" is an excuse that "losers give to their own failings" demonstrates that he believes achieving success or submitting to failure is solely dependent on the amount of effort one invests.Gradually, you'll find more and more ways of doing this; I was a fan of pointing out 'The fact that
>something happens< is indicative of
>something<' eg. 'The fact that Richard condemns "losers" is indicative of his own insecurities.' You can even shorten this to just 'That Richard condemns "losers" is indicative of his own insecurities,' which is a neat, creative way of changing things up, but it can sound a bit unnatural since it's kind of an archaic sentence structure.
So the two main things you should aim to do when embedding quotes:
1) make sure if flows grammatically with the sentence, and ideally integrate it to the point where you could remove punctuation and still have it be sensible. At the very least, aim for a 80/20 ratio of properly integrated
green/
blue ones to a few more overt
orange types.
2) try to put the analysis within the same sentence as your quote. This enables you to more easily avoid summary, and can help make you more concise too.
(I tried reading highly scoring TRs but I haven't read the novels and the language used is sophiscated as hell..)
I can absolutely understand not being able to trek through some of the really verbose essays on these forums, but I'd say keep looking at those high scoring responses. They can take a while to grasp, but when you can start evaluating what they're doing right and wrong, you'll be able to improve your own writing too. Plus, all that hellishly sophisticated vocabulary will be stuff that you can write down, look up, and start using in your own writing where appropriate
Edit:
In a similar response to a similar quote, my teacher told me I just had to provide evidence then it would be okay. I thought the quote was the evidence?
Not quite sure what you're teacher is trying to say here, but based on what you've written here, perhaps s/he wants you to better spell out the connection between the evidence and your analysis. In other words,
why is this quote evidence?
Break it down into stages:
1. Richard says luck is an excuse for losers.
2. He also says winning has to be something people want.
3. ? ? ?
4. Therefore he believes people are in control of their own lives, and that their success or failure is entirely their own fault.
There's a key link between the things that Richard says, and the estimation of his belief system, so try and find a midway point there. How do you know he invests so much faith in this belief? Why might his choice of words be particularly important? Think about the connotations of the word "excuse," or the way he divides/dichotomises the world so aggressively into 'winners' and 'losers,' then use this evidence as a means of substantiating your interpretation.
Hope that helps