The Hangout Principle

How the Yakuza games show you how to write a novel

Most Books Are Just People Hanging Out

It’s getting a bit hazy, because I read the book a few weeks ago and didn’t write this note down, but something that stuck with me about The Bestseller Code was its insistence that a writer stick to their topics. Or maybe it’s themes. The book isn’t very clear on what separates a topic from a theme, but let’s condense the two into “what the book spends time on” and call them “topics” for now.

Bestsellers tend to zero in on one major topic, with one subtopic, and MAYBE a few others. That major topic is “human connection.”

If I’m misremembering this, I prefer it the way that I misremember it.

All successful novels devote a significant fraction of their length to “human connection.” Which basically means “characters hanging out.”

I’ve been talking about this with the great e rathke over the phone for the past year or so. Novels, unlike movies, are about hanging out. When you pick up an 800-page fantasy novel, those 800 pages are not going to be spent on relentless plot and action. No, there is going to be a lot of hanging out. Characters questing together is 90% them talking, stopping at inns, drinking mead, and camping out under the stars. This is, I’m beginning to believe, what the novel does.

Jack Mason of The Perfume Nationalist has done some great episodes about what he calls “the great shopping and fucking novels” of the 1980s. I encourage you to subscribe to his Patreon. I’ve been fascinated by his commentary on these novels that absolutely tore up the bestseller charts when they were first published.

People love reading about characters hanging out. One of the bugbears of The Bestseller Code was Fifty Shades of Grey. At first, it seemed like this novel shouldn’t have been successful, because maybe surprisingly, most people actually don’t want to read about S&M sex. What the algorithm found, though, is that a full third of that novel is devoted to its protagonists hanging out, talking, and going through the ups and downs of their relationship.

So you’re going to want to figure out your plot and want to nail down how your protagonist changes over the course of your novel, but you must, MUST leave room for them to shower, eat, watch TV, and talk on the phone. It’s what makes a novel a novel.

Let’s shift focus from the novel to video games, because I believe it is the video game that is embodying this artistic principle of hanging out more than film or TV (except for the sitcom). Let’s talk specifically about the Yakuza series, developed by Toshihiro Nagoshi.

I could write forever about the Yakuza series, and maybe one day I will. For the purposes of this post, I’ll give you the short version: Sega became a third-party developer after the failure of the Dreamcast and the $47 million bomb that was Shenmue, and took a chance on Nagoshi’s pitch for a GTA competitor. At the time the original game was greenlighted, it broke the mold with its violence and with its decision to place the taboo Yakuza front and center in a video game. 23 games later, this seems like a no-brainer, but it was a risk at the time.

What made Yakuza a competitor with Grand Theft Auto was the developers’ intuition to do things differently from GTA. Whereas in GTA you can beat a hooker to death, shoot the responding officer in the head and steal his car to escape the scene of the crime, Yakuza did not allow any of this kind of off the rails wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Instead, they decided to go deeper. Every game takes place (mostly) in Kamurochō, which is almost a direct recreation of Shinjuku’s Kabukichō district, but you can only visit a few blocks. But where GTA, Cyberpunk, and Red Dead have scope, Yakuza focuses on depth.

Within those few blocks, you can visit arcades and play all the games on offer, get involved in competitive toy car racing, become an underground bare-knuckle boxer, take selfies to win a “best smile” competition, and on and on. You can really explore this district, and people who enjoy Yakuza often dig it for these minigames, not in spite of them.

The Yakuza series is, for a video game, fairly mundane. It has all the elements of a winner: compelling plot, great writing, strong character development. But it’s in the smaller moments of the game (that in fact make up most of the game) that the series really shines. You get to know people. You help them. At times, the side quests can get a bit boring, but you accept that boredom as part of the holistic goal of immersing yourself into the world. More than any other game I’ve ever played, I feel like I’m living in that game.

Compare that to the Doom remake, where it’s nonstop gore and action and Mick Gordon’s incredible soundtrack blowing out your eardrums. Instead of sensory overload, Yakuza opts for a more immersive experience. So, once you complete the game, you get a feeling similar to having completed an 800-page novel: you spent 20-30 hours on it, got to know the characters, and really lived within it for that time.

In short: you hang out in the world of Yakuza, and people love that about it.

In your novel, feel free to let your characters live. Keep in mind that there is a plot, there is pacing, and that you need to write accordingly. But one thing after the other becomes just that. Let them slow down, putter around, go on side quests. Your readers will follow you.

Recent Reading:

I tore through Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards in about four days in order to record this Agitator episode with Rare Candy’s Gain of Fiction book club. These days, I like to approach reading from various mediums at once. I purchase a book on Audible, then get the book on Kindle or paperback. I like this hybrid method, turning the book on while I’m washing dishes or driving to Walmart, then reading it in bed.

The Shards is definitely Ellis’s masterpiece, and fully embodies the hangout principle. At least 1/3rd of the book is devoted to rich white kids hanging out at prep school, pool houses, and parties in their absent parents’ empty mansions. The narrative is delivered in Ellis’s wonderful, compelling voice, which comes through on the page almost as well as when you listen to him narrate it for you. The book is very silly, high melodrama and also actual drama, and I loved every second of it.

Next up for me is Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama. I’m about a hundred and fifty pages in and enjoying the dry political Machiavelli police station stuff. This book devotes as much space (if not more) to whether the protagonist can do his job and please his boss as it does to the fact that his teenage daughter has gone missing. That neurodivergent focus gives the book an alien, sinister feeling that I’m enjoying.

Currently watching:

Just started season 2 of Jujutsu Kaisen, and it’s just as good as everyone says it is.

Currently working on:

A couple books.

Happy writing!