If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade; and you must have asked who he was. It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp. (13)

The quote is indented twice what you’d use to indent the first line of a paragraph; it’s single-spaced, although set off from the material immediately before and after it with a double space; no quotation marks are put around it; and the final period lands before the parenthetical page numbers.

If you add to or alter material in the quote, to make it fit better in the context you are placing it in put the added material inside brackets, like this: “It was there that, several years ago, I saw [Ethan] for the first time" (13). By the way, you’re not allowed to alter the quoted material so as to change its meaning. Usually you’d add or change words in order to clarify (such as replacing pronouns with proper names) or to make the verb tense consistent with the tense your paper is written in. Don't use brackets to supplement what's already there (for example, "It was there that, several years ago, I saw him [Ethan] for the first time"); instead, simply replace the ambiguity ("It was there that, several years ago, I saw [Ethan] for the first time").

You may say to yourself, “I’m going to write about all the times in this book the cat sits on the mat;” that’s fine—that’s your topic. Now, what do you want to say about it, other than that it happens? Why does it happen? What does it symbolize? Why should we care? “The repeated motif of the cat sitting on the mat in this book is part of an overall theme about the impossibility of separating nature from culture:” that would be a thesis. It’s an assertion, a point of view, that must be argued using textual evidence (quotes).

The way you use textual evidence is important. Select your quotations with care. Do they really illustrate the point you wish to make? Would different quotes be better? Next, you must remember to explain why the quote illustrates your point—don’t assume it’s obvious. Authors can’t do your work for you: they write the literature, and you write the literary criticism.

Avoid plot summary. I’ve read the books; I don’t need to be told what happens when.

Conversely, I do need to be given some hints as to what’s going to happen when in your paper. Your paper should have some clear organizational scheme—ideally, one that is driven by your idea, rather than by the plot or chronology of the work you're writing about. Use your introduction to describe the shape of your argument, then follow through with what you’ve promised.

Try to break the paper up into chunks. This will both help you to write it, and help me to read it. Think of a 5-page paper as a 4-pager with a half-page introduction, and a half-page conclusion. Think of the middle 4 pages as 3 or 4 smaller units of writing. These smaller units should all be interrelated— they should build upon and support each other—but each should also be doing its own thing. They’re like chapters in a book. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s a reminder to beware of rambling.