New novel hopeful

[Clueless Morgan]

Here are some thoughts (you wanted honest...):

• From what I gather, it's the end of the world in some form or other, this narrator is "the last man standing" and there has been a considerable amount of time between the end of the world and the moment the story starts (the narrator has eaten through all the farm animals and is down to rummaging through cupboards for food).  So, why is there still internet service?  That sort of ruins the suspense for me - if there's internet service than there are people maintaining the infrastructure which means this narrator isn't the last person on the planet.
  
• I'm a cat person, right?  That's, like, the first thing anyone who knows me learns about me.  But I don't understand why this guy is so focused on his cat.  For instance, why he would put it through the terror of riding around on the back of a motorcycle (if this is not something the cat is already accustomed to from "before" then it would only serve to terrify it), or why, in a survival situation he would chose to take his cat on the back of a motorcycle rather than a shotgun.
  
• "Something" clawing at the "door" and the door turns out to be a cloth?  What?
  
• Perhaps the mouthing to the cat should be internal thought rather than actually mouthing words.  If my life were potentially in danger I'd think those thoughts and kiss the cat, not mouth them.  But maybe that's just me??
  

• Once at the back door, I opened it wide and shouted out with a “Hey”.
  
  I did not waste any time at the door. I was back in my room within seconds and I scrambled into the hole in my floor.

  
  Huh??  So the narrator goes to investigate what's causing the sound, but doesn't stick around long enough to even look around??  WTF is going on?  How does the narrator even know that leaving through this escape hatch won't lead him directly to whatever was just outside but is now, presumably, startled some distance away from the trailer and now has a better view underneath it where the narrator is now hiding?  I'm so confused!!!
  

Based merely on these two chapters (I didn't read the third) I would not continue reading.

I think there needs to be more world-building, or at least better establishment of the situation and the stakes.

I don't know who this narrator is or what he wants.  Or, more to the point, I don't care.  Make me care about the narrator.

I don't understand why this guy is so attached to his cat so that needs to be fleshed out.  Establish that this cat is already accustomed to riding around on a motorcycle (otherwise it's just mean!), that it follows the narrator around like a dog or something, and why the cat can't just be set free to fend for itself while the narrator leaves.  Right now it's just a cat.  Make it a character.  And it better have a pay-off in the later part of the story - it had better do something that moves the plot forward in some meaningful way - otherwise leave it behind or don't even include it.

I'm thinking you need more showing and less telling - maybe start the story with the guy going through the kitchen of a neighbor and bringing his haul back to his trailer and that is when this strange noise that the door/cloth happens?  Opening the story with the guy waking up and then info-dumping on the reader isn't keeping my attention, but if this guy were looting a neighbor's house I'd at least want to know why and that's when you could introduce the end of the world stuff.  Instead of telling the reader why the narrator can't leave (because of the snow) show us how he's making preparations to leave as soon as the snow starts to melt.  Start with an exciting scene that sets up the mood and a bit of the circumstances of the story; you can info-dump about the end of the world later.

I get that there's no love lost between the narrator and his father but it's conveyed in exposition right now and that's boring.

The whole "there's still electricity" thing doesn't bother me as much as the "there's still internet" thing.  I could see how a trailer might be running off batteries of some kind (depending on the kind of trailer - is it a stationary trailer or a travel trailer?), but the internet thing completely ruins suspense for me.  Like I said above, internet service isn't just a single thing, it's contingent on there still being some amount of functioning infrastructure which itself implies humans to maintain said infrastructure which removes the suspense of whether this narrator is really the last human on earth.  If this is some kind of futuristic world in which internet isn't reliant on electricity or they've developed biotechnology that powers stuff like internet than that needs to be established up front but as it reads this sounds like it's supposed to be taking place circa now and now we need things like an electrical grid and satellite-communication in order for things like the internet to work.  Not buying it.  Suspension of disbelief is gone.


Frankly, if I were you I'd go through all the novels on my shelf and read their first chapters looking specifically for things like how character is established, how mood is established, how setting is established, how tension in the story is established, etc.  

I've heard that readers (and editors) will often decide on whether they will continue reading a novel based solely on the first 13 lines of a book (which basically equates to the first page), and, to be honest, I wouldn't continue reading this based on what I've read so far.  I'm confused, I'm not invested in the narrator, and I'm sort of bored.


Can I ask what your goal for this story is?  Are you writing it for fun?  Are you hoping to publish it?