On second thoughts: drafting (and) the fictional narrator

While many novelists redraft their work repeatedly, the narrators they create often seem to reject the idea of revision. In first-person novels, the narrative is often presented either as an oral performance, a spontaneous speech act, or as the product of a single draft, hastily scribbled down. But this article argues that there is much to be gained from giving fictional narrators a drafting practice as rich and complex as their author’s. Positioning the narrator as a reviser opens up a wealth of narrative possibilities that shed light on character, motivation and change. In the case of confession narratives, revision can be especially revealing, expressing profound ambiguities inherent in the act of confession. Through a critical examination of confessional literature (including autobiographies such as Rousseau’s Confessions and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Words, and confessional novels like Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending), and practice-based research in the shape of the author’s own recently completed novel, Montreal, the paper explores the paradoxical challenge of a revised, polished text that invites the reader to consider the drafting practice that created it, and suggests ways in which this practice might be revealed.