Damon Suede’s Hot Head, Verbs, and Jane Austen

I was lured into reading Damon Suede’s Verbalize after hearing him do interviews with Kobo Writing Life and Joanna Penn’s podcast. In both, he laid out his approach to writing by focusing in on character strategy and tactics rather than psychology and background, with a particular focus on how this dynamic plays out in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

The moment I heard him lay out the idea that Darcy’s strategy is preserving, while Lizzy Bennett seeks to provoke, I was sold on the potential of his approach. That he continued this analysis in both Verbalize–in more detail, and spreading the focus to the minor characters–was one of the delights of his book.

Naturally, after reading his non-fiction books on writing, I got curious about his fiction work and how he deployed his advice there. I picked up his first novel, Hot Head, about a pair of firefighters who develop feelings for one another and try to hide it for the sake of their friendship. It’s an incredibly robust book, both in the language and the plotting, and I devoured it in the space of the day.

Admittedly, a day where I stayed up until 2:00 AM just to finish the book and find out what happens, but that’s still a day. It’s that damn good.

But the delight, when reflecting upon Hot Head in light of Suede’s theories, was seeing the way he’d inverted the dynamic of Pride and Prejudice in order to drive the story. The protagonist, Griff, spends much of the book trying to preserve thing (his friendships, his family, his job), while his antagonist, Dante, is all about provoking reactions as he navigates the world.

Things play out very differently to Austen’s novel–partially because of the modern setting, the incredibly sexy-times within, the queer focus, and the different tactical approaches the character’s use to achieve their goals–but intriguing to look at the way Suede utilises the same dynamic in order to drive the narrative.

The two books don’t look like they’d have anything in common, but the bones are definitely there. I’m already planning a re-read with an eye to the secondary characters, seeing if there’s any correlations there (I’m putting my money on Dante’s sister borrowing from Suede’s reading of Mary Bennett).

If you’re a fan of romance novels, check out Hot Head–it’s incredibly good. If you’re an aspiring writer, pick up a copy of Verbalize and read it back-to-back with Suede’s novel–you not only get a great read, but a practice-led example of the already-illuminating approach he’s advocating for in his writing books.