Eiichiro Oda's Hidden Tips For Story Success - Statements & Facts 

   Oda is a storytelling genius, and you probably have either heard or said that to yourself at some point, I 100% agree with this assessment. But the big question is WHY? And so in this article, I want to look behind the curtain and talk about the man, the myth, the legend, Eiichiro Oda himself, and how he can create such a long-running story, not only without losing any focus, energy, or novelty but has actually, in fact, increasing them.

   Now finding out Oda's secret to writing One Piece out, seems to be away more of an ambitious project than I originally had thought. We generally talk so much about "Oda greatness", and how good a chapter, or a character, or even an entire Arc in the story have been. And yes, there is no denied, Oda has great world-building, great characters, and an engaging and driving plot. However, one thing I noticed is that not many people ask the question, HOW exactly does Oda do all that. Surely it must all be planned out down to the very last detail or is Oda simply a free-styling genius who prefers to improvise everything with miraculous consistency? 

   To answer this question I needed to find out more about Oda as a person and as a storyteller, which is surprisingly hard. Because as you might know, the man likes to stay on the sidelines, preferring to leave the spotlight on his work. there are close to no pictures of him and actually, some fake ones and not much is know about his private life either, But I had to start somewhere, as I put through the little material that I had, the first thing that I came to realize is that Oda or Oda-Sensei, as most people in Japan like to call him respectfully is actually a little bit dishonest when it comes to talking about his work. 

   For instance, in one interview Oda said that he doesn't really try to put any deeper meaning into his story. However, we all know that almost no other story has as many underlying themes and moral problems in its narrative as One Piece: the racism towards the Fishmen, the injustice of the world government, the power of dreams, freedom, etc... Now in another interview, Oda stated that he absolutely hates tear jerkers in storytelling. However, Oda himself admits that One Piece doesn't exactly suffer from a shortage of heartbreaking moments, and in general, Oda likes to mention that he simply draws what he feels like drawing, and often just improvises as he moves along. 

   A famous example of this is, for example, the introduction of the supernova. But as I found the whole truth through my digging, this is not also entirely true, because as many of those working with him have commented "Oda is an absolute perfectionist when it comes to his work, and Oda himself knows and alleges this. his obsession with telling a perfect story actually comes up quite frequently in his interviews". When asked, what about his work makes him the happiest, his answer was this: 

That'd probably have to be whenever I make a good story. I'm a total wreck when I can't do my job well, I wind up moping if I don't feel like I fully completed a good story. I can't rest until I make up for it next week. 

   In writing One Piece Oda gets his inspiration from history, folklore, and especially from films. His favorite directors include the likes of Tim Burton, Hayao Miyazaki, and Quentin Tarantino, and what all of these directors have in common, is their desire to tell the perfect story. Hmm, so improvisation, and perfectionism! Can these two things actually both go together, I wondered?! And even if Oda somehow did figure out that a long-running story actually can keep delivering, the question again is HOW? I had to dig deeper, first of I've always kind of wondered how had Oda the time and of course also the energy to come up with random fund facts about One Piece characters and share them in ASPZS or on some other platforms?

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   Looking through more of the interviews, I stumbled across one of the mind-blowing techniques that Oda uses not only to keep the story full of energy and interesting but surely must be the foundation for his crazy web of characters. All characters in One Piece are designed to be real people, let me explain: When writing his story, Oda seems to put himself into the shoes of each of his characters as you might for example do when trying to understand another person's perspective in the real world, in this way he can design what a character would realistically do in any given moment, basically next level empathy. So how does he do that? 

   Well, have you ever wondered what these really weird details are we often learn about characters in Manga? Like, what is Doflamingo's favorite food? What is Zoro's blood type? Or, how tall is Law? Oh, and by the way, when is Kaido's birthday? 

    As Hirohiko Araki, the author of Jojo explains in his book, it's apparently considered best practice among mangaka's to create crazily detailed profiles of each major character, everything from basic physical attributes over their past history down to specific personality trades and quirks. Now, this may seem like an unnecessary amount of time to spend thinking about each individual character, especially since many of these facts don't even come up in the story in the first place, but that's precisely the point, getting to know your characters so well and in so much detail that you can practically predict what they would do next. 

   This is how Oda writes,  that's why One Piece characters rarely, or they are even say never feel out of character, but Oda takes this even further " I write in pretty minute detail when someone makes a certain action, how people around that individual will respond. Normally when making a story move along it's fine to simply draw the main characters. But rather than that, I want to write about what the townspeople are thinking by putting all feelings in their place within a scene". This is what we're dealing with here, Oda basically lets his characters perform like actors on the stage, and ultimately it's this method of organic writing that leads to the story inevitably side-tracking and expanding on its own, and has created his characters in such rich detail, it pretty much advances the plot for Oda. 

   This is next-level writing, but, there is one big problem with this kind of writing technique, it's very easy to lose focus and have the story move further and further away from the original plot. I'm sure you have seen stories like this before where suddenly the side plot becomes the main plot, and readers are left totally confused as to what actually happened to the original stories. However, Oda seems to do this so flawlessly that every single plot actually seems to contribute to the overall story Arc. He said that the only things that he was absolutely sure of before even starting One Piece were: Luffy, his powers, the ending, and that he wanted to draw one great of an epic adventure. Pretty much the exact opposite of having everything and everyone planned out right from the start, however, these specific elements are actually just what any good story needs before you start writing, basically, act as a sword of a framework with a set of rules to operate them. 

   Oda knew who Luffy is and exactly what he wanted right from the start, he also Knew what the story would be about and what would mark its beginning and end. This way, no matter how his characters would behave or move through the story, they would always be striving towards that ending, giving the story structure and direction despite this improvised style, and even further than that, establishing the rules of the world right from the start allows for a consistent and organic plot. 

   There are devil fruits with special powers in this world, it's a world of pirates, mostly covered by water, monsters exist and anything can happen in the grand line. Oda establishes these things right from the start and within these rules can let his characters run completely free, this exceptionally strong set of rules and the overall Oda direction of the plot that Oda has established ultimately allow him to let his characters move freely and the plot take him wherever it leads him.

   And so it finally clicked for me, the secret to Oda's genius is that he can flawlessly combine planning and improvisation to create an entirely new world of thousands of individual characters and hundreds of locations, all based on his inspiration and imagination. 

   A story that now rightfully has breeched 1000 chapters and that both having set the world record for most copies published for the same comic book by the same author, it clearly is the best Manga in history for a reason.