Response to Kevin Boy's "Where to Start"

      Where it Starts” is a short story involving the narrator, Darroll, who is living with a family that find it normal to shelter him from obvious and normal activities. He eventually finds out that a favorite car of his that his grandpa once owned was supposed to be given to him after grandpa died, but his parents lied to him and either sold it or did something else with it. Several things I enjoyed in this story were the description of the basement, as it seemed to come across as very eerie and a place that was filled with the past that Darroll did not want to deal with. I also liked the descriptions after Darroll finds out the car was rightfully his, as it shows his true anger and did not overdue it, but made the audience feel his anger not only toward his parents, but toward the way of life his parents made him live.

A few things that I felt could be changed or corrected is the tone of family. I feel like this story wants to revolve around how different and sheltered the family treats Darroll, but the tone of the parents is too careful for me and not mean enough. It needs more negative emotion. Possibly use more dialogue with the parents to explain how strange and different the way they treat Darroll is. I also did not see much character development from Darroll from start to finish. It seems like Darroll is aware of the way his family treats him, and in the end he is just even angrier. I want to see how he plans to change his way of life, his wants and how his parents plan to counter his actions of possibly becoming more independent. 

I also felt like you could have shown me more with the story instead of told me. There is a lot of descriptions of how Darroll looks at different aspects of life, and I would probably keep most of them, but maybe change the way they are presented by using actions and scenes instead of simply stating what he thinks. An example of this would be when Darroll opens the story by explaining “the voices” in his head, possibly replace this with a scene that shows Darroll realizing these external forces working against him instead of simply stating that they are there.

The grandpa seems to be acting as a sort of savior in the story. Play with this aspect more and try to incorporate it with more emphasize. 

The ending left me with lots of questions. What happens to Darroll? Does he find the car? Do his parents prevent him from finding the car? The ending feels like the ending of a chapter in a longer piece instead of an ending. Incorporate the answers to some of these questions and the story should feel more complete and show more character development.