4 Tips for Using Textual Evidence for Short Stories

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If you've ever had to analyze a story for an English class, there's a good chance your instructor told you to support your ideas with textual evidence. Maybe you were told to "use quotations." Maybe you were just told to "write a paper" and had no idea what to include in it.

While it's almost always a good idea to include quotations when writing about short stories, the trick lies in choosing which quotations to include and, more importantly, what exactly you want to say about them. Quotations don't really become "evidence" until you explain what they prove and how they prove it.

The tips below should help you understand what your instructor (probably) expects from you. Follow them and — if all goes well — you'll find yourself one step closer to a perfect paper! 

01
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Make an Argument

In academic papers, a string of unrelated quotations can't substitute for a coherent argument, no matter how many interesting observations you make about those quotations. So you need to decide what point you want to make in your paper.

For example, instead of writing a paper that's generically "about" Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People," you might write a paper arguing that Joy's physical shortcomings — her nearsightedness and her missing leg — represent her spiritual shortcomings.

Many of the pieces I publish provide a general overview of a story but would not succeed as school papers because they don't present a focused argument. Take a look at "Overview of Alice Munro's 'The Turkey Season.'" In a school paper, you'd never want to include a plot summary unless your teacher specifically asked for it. Also, you'd probably never want to bounce from one unrelated, under-examined theme to another.

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Prove Every Claim

Textual evidence is used to prove the larger argument you're making about a story, but it is also used to support all the smaller points you make along the way. Every time you make a claim — large or small — about a story, you need to explain how you know what you know.

For example, in Langston Hughes' short story "Early Autumn," we made the claim that one of the characters, Bill, could think about almost nothing except "how old Mary looked." When you make a claim like this in a paper for school, you need to imagine someone standing over your shoulder and disagreeing with you. What if someone says "He doesn't think she's old! He thinks she's young and beautiful!"

Identify the place in the story that you'd point to and say "He does too think she's old! It says right here!" That's the quotation you want to include.

03
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State the Obvious

This one is so important. The short version is that students are often afraid to state the obvious in their papers because they think it's too simple. Yet stating the obvious is the only way students can get credit for knowing it.

Your instructor probably recognizes that pickled herring and Schlitz are meant to mark class differences in John Updike's "A & P." But until you write it down, your instructor has no way of knowing that you know it.

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Follow the Three-To-One Rule

For every line you quote, you should plan to write at least three lines explaining what the quotation means and how it relates to the larger point of your paper. This can seem really daunting, but try to examine every word of the quotation. Do any of the words sometimes have multiple meanings? What are the connotations of each word? What is the tone? Notice that "stating the obvious" will help you meet the three-to-one rule.

The Langston Hughes example above provides a good example of how you can expand your ideas. The truth is, no one could read that story and imagine that Bill thinks Mary is young and beautiful.

So try imagining a more complex voice disagreeing with you. Instead of claiming that Bill thinks Mary is young and beautiful, the voice says "Well, sure, he thinks she's old, but that's not the only thing he thinks about." At that point, you could modify your claim. Or you could try to identify what exactly made you think her age was all he could think about. By the time you explained Bill's hesitant ellipses, the effect of Hughes' parentheses, and the significance of the word "wanted," you'd surely have three lines. 

Give It a Try

Following these tips might feel awkward or forced at first. But even if your paper doesn't flow quite so smoothly as you'd like, your attempts to closely examine the text of a story may yield pleasant surprises for both you and your instructor.

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Sustana, Catherine. "4 Tips for Using Textual Evidence for Short Stories." ThoughtCo, Aug. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/tips-for-using-textual-evidence-2990406. Sustana, Catherine. (2020, August 29). 4 Tips for Using Textual Evidence for Short Stories. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/tips-for-using-textual-evidence-2990406 Sustana, Catherine. "4 Tips for Using Textual Evidence for Short Stories." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/tips-for-using-textual-evidence-2990406 (accessed March 29, 2024).