He doesn’t

You don’t have to.

You just leave enough vague things, unexplained concepts, hinted at ideas. That way you can use them later, and have it appear as foreshadowing.

One piece is riddled with poorly planned and forgotten plot: https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePiece/s/tCr8QF3ZCe

But like Harry Potter, you can grab some idea you threw in early (invisibility cloak) and turn it into a whole backstory (deathly hallows, Grindelwald). It’s not planning it’s just building your world and characters slightly larger than you need right now. Snape was never written as a love interest for Harry’s mom, that came after as a retroactive plot that fit into what had been established already.

Another example is Attack on Titan (as you like anime), the titans were the big mystery from episode one. The author kept adding more twists and mysteries and reveals, that by the time the answer for how the titans came to be, it actually wasn’t a real answer - yet the audience by that point were so invested and deep into the lore it seemed satisfying. If it was revealed earlier on it would have been considered horrible writing.

Idk about yall but I start with the ending🤷‍♂️

(This is easy to do with shorter stories but becomes harder the more you end up writing)

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shivers

Most of the time, you don't plan that far ahead. You just keep coming up with new ideas and iterating on old ones. Sometimes, however, you have an idea that sticks with you, even though you know it will take a long time to properly execute. In that case, you can lay the groundwork as early as you can with foreshadowing since you already know where everything is heading and can work toward it. But aside from some broad plot points, that's the exception and not the rule when it comes to anything "hundreds of episodes" out.

Some writers plan it all, some fly by the seat of their pants, some do a little of each.

With a work as long and random as One Piece, I’d say they are making up 90% of it as they go.

They may have some major arcs planned, say across a given season, but I reckon they are just gleefully sewing chaos with each episode.

Sometimes creators just make up things as they go along and build on it. Take Toriyama and the Dragonball franchise. Originally, he created Goku as a parody of Sun Wukong the Monkey King. In the OG Dragonball, Goku was just a random Earthling who was super strong, had a monkey tail, used martial arts, and had the tendency to transform into a giant ape in a full moon. The whole ‘Goku is actually part of an intergalactic race of super strong space warriors that all got killed by a freaky lizard person called Frieza; oh, and Goku is actually the prophesied Chosen One that would ascend to Super Saiyan and defeat Frieza and avenge his people’ thing didn’t happen until Dragonball Z. I highly doubt Toriyama planned THAT far ahead when he was writing Dragonball. In the OG? Again, Goku was just a quirky little kid.

TL;DR: Toriyama just made up things as he went along. Creators do that.

As a pantser, my future plans are seeded by "secrets".

Once I've gotten a good grasp of my characters, thoughts easily turn towards their ulterior motives and formative traumas. Those are elements worth holding onto, until the time is right.

There's also elements for exploration. What hidden truths of the world are waiting to be uncovered?

The trick is knowing how to not play your hand all at once. Always keep material in reserve for a more impactful moment.

I had a conversation with a television producer years ago. He said when someone has a pitch for him he always asks, what happens in season 3. Most people can’t say, and he knows most people don’t plan that far ahead depending on what the type of show is, but it lets the creator know that they need to be roadmapping something just in case it does get picked up. Realistically unless it’s a 3 camera comedy you at least have a general idea of the plot of the first season, and you write as you go. You know in that season you want X, Y, and Z to happen. Then you fill in the blanks.

Some, by writing an outline. I wrote a webserial for many years, on and off. The form was an ongoing story, so I couldn't start at the end, exactly; there was no set ending. Like a soap opera, y'know? That required organization. The strategy of breaking things into seasons and big plot beats was my lifeline. I started from what I knew I wanted to happen, large moments, reveals, turning points, etc., and wove plots around them.

I'd develop story arcs for my cast of characters and first sketch out the plot beats I wanted to hit, and analyze them all to figure out ways in which each arc could have at least some crossover with another. (I wanted the story world to feel cohesive and connected.) Not all characters got their own arcs; some were major players one season, others would move to the frontburner the next. But their lives were intertwined.

So once I had the larger view planned, I'd start to sketch out how these arcs and umbrella stories could be broken up. I'd organize them so the major plots would come to a head at the season-ending cliffhanger. Of course there'd be various highlights and twists over the course of the season, but the end of the season needed a climax to entice readers to want to continue (after I took a break for a few months).

Then I broke these arcs down into episodes and scenes, making sure to "choreograph" everything so there was a good mix of tones or mini-arcs throughout each installment.

Note that all of this wasn't in great detail. If I came up with specific ideas while planning, like lines of dialogue, a unique setting, a cool bit of action, etc., I'd jot them down and add them to the season(s)-long plan roughly where I figured they'd probably fit. But otherwise I gave myself room to explore and go off-path. MANY times, I'd realize a plot wouldn't work, or a character was developing in a way that made their current arc no longer appropriate for whom they were becoming. So I learned how to reweave the tapestry.

For some this might seem agonizing. Pantsers will side-eye me for being OCD-ish and perhaps think this takes the fun and excitement out of writing. It might for them, but for others, this type of outlining gives me comfort and a safety net. It allowed me to weave characters in and out of others' lives with confidence that I wasn't screwing up continuity. Since there was a lot of suspense/mystery in the serial, planning ahead allowed me to plant clues along the way for sharp-eyed readers to catch, so even the biggest twists could receive simultaneous reactions of both shock and "OMG that's why CharacterName said ____! It makes total sense now!"

And there was discovery! Figuring out how to get to those big plot beats that I knew were coming was a challenge and delight. I did a changing things mid-stream.or re-ordering, and as I said, sometimes the plot beats no longer quite fit the characters, so I had to be flexible. I had to look back at storylines and scenes to see if there was some detail I'd included that might be ripe for exploring.

I can't tell you how many times I found little bits of backstory I'd tossed in for no real reason in some early installment that would trigger a new story idea, or even work perfectly to justify a twist I'd just thought of, as if I'd planned it that way all along. My unconscious had planted a seed I didn't even know would blossom. I think once you know your characters and where you want the story to go, even just vaguely, you acquire the skill to identify what fits for your story goals.

This granularity would be hellish for some folks, and it's definitely not for every genre or format of story. I do think it's best for any kind of longform story, whether that's an ongoing serial or an audio series or an epic multi-book saga.

It saw me through 2 million words, 250 episodes and 18 years, on and off. Plus, a nice little appreciative audience. Not huge by any stretch, but this project began back in the mid-1990s, so finding anyone around was a miracle. This was a passion project, definitely not a career. Especially since it was free and I earned bupkis, lol.

But learning these skills over time turned me into a much more confident author when I turned to novels, especially in the mystery and fantasy genres!

Yikes, sorry for the dissertation. You can tell I still tend to write longform, huh? Well, um, that's how at least one weirdo does it.

So the basic idea for Mangka is they produce each chapter a week after meeting with their editor. Oda does plan and plot things out. The story is too massive not to be but generally they start with a rough outline and make goal posts example Befgining or act 1 to the Alabasta or Skypiea arc. If you know where you're going (the goal post) the way you get there is pretty malleable. Mor likely than nit he has a gew key plot points he knows he needs to hit and works to accomplish what he needs to have all the pieces there.

What you see as foreshadowing may well have been written late in the process. When people write twists they often go back and plant seeds earlier in the story. What seems worked put to the reader/viewer might well be great editing or a happy accident rather than meticulous planning.

Currently writing a book on how to write Manga, though at this point I'm not sure if I'll finish a third "how-to" book with AI taking over everything... anyway, to answer your question.

1) Most mangaka play how they write their stories really close to the chest.

2) Most mangaka rely on tradition Japanese story telling structure such as Kishōtenketsu, which is basically intro, development, twist, conclusion. It's a very open approach that allows the writer to literally go just about anywhere...

which is one of the downfalls of most manga, because even the most popular mangas have arcs that are not well received as they meander far from the core underpinnings of the story. A lot of times, these meanderings fall into character driven slice of life territory, which again for a lot of Shonen type manga, is not what the core audience is there to see.

3) Finally, for those that do plan out elaborate details, and most certainly some do play the long game (ONCE THEIR MANGA IS POPULAR). The trick is to outline the entire series with broad stroke bullet points. Writing toward distant broad strokes isn't as difficult as you think... and if you keep a well maintained series bible and complete outline, you can update it as the series progresses, filling in greater details as you go.

In a long running series, you can't go back and adjust the published material, BUT you can even go back and fill out more backstory that hasn't yet been touched on. This is no easy task when a series becomes a huge hit and spans vasts numbers of issues.

But when you're rolling in that kind of cash and can hire a crew of assistants which most successful mangaka do, it's certainly another tool in the writer's tool basket.

Write on, write often!

I go back and revise, and pretend I knew what I was doing all along.

I am a damn fraud LMAO

For me. I start by knowing where I want to end. That is a big sign to keep my on track. The rest is details.

Also practice. Lots of practice

It’s easier with a self contained novel or even a trilogy. You plot and outline where you want the story and characters to end up. Sometimes they get there, sometimes they surprise you and the ending changes.

Long running content (anime, comics, sitcoms) are rather different. For one, you have a team working together to write each entry usually with a show runner approving each one. And often times continuity is straight up ignored. You see that with a number of pre-streaming shows and especially comics. I mean, good lord the X-Men have gone through so many continuity changes in their runs it’s impossible to keep up.

I start with the ending, or at least a general idea for how I want it to end and the beats or themes I want to hit to get there

When it comes to Oda... He's been writing One Piece almost weekly for close to thirty years. If you read the manga you'll see that each main arc tends to play out in a similar way. I get the feeling he knows where he wants it to end, but plans on and arc-by-arc basis

Howard Taylor, who Writes a webcomic called schlock mercenary, was asked about this, he said: keep detailed notes, and pray you dont write yourself into a corner.

Some writers put in random details which they then use later when it occurs to them, and some writers plan things far far far in advance.

A large portion of One Piece wasn’t actually planned. He has an ending, and few arcs planned, but he’s openly told us that he expected it to wrap up within 5 years and that the Shichibukai were not supposed to last as long as they did.

That means that majority of what we saw wasn’t part of his original plan. You cannot really plan a story that goes on for more than 20+ years.

I read a ton of manga and have off and on for years. Some of this applies to serial writing too in a professional sense, but a lot of serial writers on wattpad/royal road (who for the intent are often unpublished traditionally and would be amateurs) write ahead. In those areas it’s common to hear about backlogs of a dozen or more chapters in case life gets in the way of making your release deadlines. Release consistency is the life and death of web serial writing.

In the professional areas, deadlines need to be avoided. For manga, there is no buffer, so mangaka have to write as they go or “pants” as it’s commonly referred to. A series as long running as One Piece, the author has had years to plan some details and endings. Others might be a small thing referenced that is called back on. There’s a lot of “chekov’s x” tropes defining an item that is mentioned or referenced without an obvious purpose because it will be relevant later. Then when it happens it becomes a foreshadowing moment.

We don’t know the exact thing about Oda. Originally he planned the series to last five years, but it was a success and there was a lot of depth to add. He has an ending in mind, and there’s a lot of things that were early on like “they’re going to this island some day” or “this is the last island in the grand line” but sometimes smaller plot points pop up and reference a former character or arc.

The way manga writers do it every week is they collaborate with their editor, who sees the results and response of a previous chapter and can help guide the following chapters. If something was well received, it might be suggested to build on it. Introduce a character who becomes a fan favorite? Write and draw the story to include them more. Is there a resolution coming up? If the arc is losing its appeal, the editor might try to wrap it up( and sometimes plan these for chapters with color pages or the cover of the magazine highlight to emphasize) among other things, so a lot of it is truly made up as they go. Shueisha/weekly shonen jump (who publishes the one piece story) is at most 2 weeks ahead of print, so when a chapter releases on Monday morning with the magazine, the author is likely working on the next chapter or the chapter after next at the latest. Still, they can have some ideas or plans for an ending or important scenes and arcs to get to, but a lot of it is week by week.

I plan it out in my head (not recommended).

The usual advice I hear is outlining, where you list out the major scenes you want to write, then sort them by the order in which they'd make the most sense and then plan your story around that.

No idea how Oda does it. He has a notoriously messy desk, so it's probably covered in notes. I've also heard people speculate that he rereads his own work and then writes plot twists around the tiny details, instead of the other way around. Your guess is as good as mine though.

Sometimes it’s planned from the moment the character is introduced, others the ideas come up later and you weave them in to make it work.

Outline drafts as many times as it takes

I have a basic sketch of the arc of the whole series, and of the sub arcs to get the various characters trained and where they need to be and when.

It will be 21 books, I don't know a lot of details yet, but I know that overall certain things need to happen at different points of the story. I am going back and forth between showing the progress of various characters' ability to fight/heal/do magic and the overall quest to shut down the engines that are spewing dangerous magic and making large swaths of the continent uninhabitable. (There was a war, and magical WMDs were used, which...broke...magic.)

For example, I know that in book five they will rig up a reader and find data crystals that works to prove to everyone that some of the past can be read! (I also know that there will be an element of farce there, because the first working data crystal they plug into a working reader will be....a fart joke book or a guide to brothels for the man-about-town, or something like that.) In the second book, I need to mention that at least one of the men who is a resident scholar at the collegium is one of those guys who likes to tinker with the old tech and in this book is very peeved to be hauled away from something he's almost got working to handle a school issue. We'll see him again in later books, but he needs to be introduced now.

I also know at the end of the sixth book one of the main characters will find a data crystal and think it's pretty and take it home for a decoration. Somewhere around the eighteenth book, his decoration turns out to be a manual for the construction of the mana engines, and contains data on how to shut them down. Rest of that book will be a lot of questing through ruins and bonding through doing dangerous stuff together. I'll leave figuring exactly what that stuff is till later when I'm plotting that book in more detail.

I still haven't decided whether one of the MCs is going to die at the end of the whole series. Though I do know the ending scene/epilogue of the book series.

I don't write any one book just straight through from beginning to end. I often have scenes come to mind while I'm folding laundry or something and then write them down. Then I work that into the book when I sit down and write it. But the overall plot is there so that I can think about the book and get inspirations that will work within the plot.

Oda retcons his stories a lot afaik, and has a dedicated team for keeping lore and continuity as accurate as possible

Lots and lots of notes during initial creation and throughout the series. Sometimes, adjusting connections to fit the narrative.

I always start a new project knowing my opening and closing images (how the world and characters change over your story).

That being said, there are tried and true formulas for plotting serials if that’s what you’re focused on. You can research those, as it’s far too much to cover in a Reddit comment. But in summary, each season/ book has its own arc, and so do the episodes/ chapters within it.

I make a rough outline of the different chapters and what should happen in them.

In a long running series like One Piece, however, I imagine that Oda has had the ending in mind from the beginning, but the journey has probably been modified as time went by.

In my personal opinion, shonen manga like One Piece are no holy grail of writing. It basically reduces itself to genre fodder and repetitive set ups and storylines. It also is a medium separate from “writing” in that artwork is used to communicate the story as well which changes a lot of the capability of a piece.

Oda basically just pencils in ideas for the future and deals with the specifics later, and also improvs really well.

For example, he very early on name drops Jinbe, the only info given is that he is one of the warlords. That's it. Oda has basically nothing else prepared for that character and has no real idea when Jinbe will actually turn up. Then, 400 chapters later, when Oda decides now is a good time to bring Jinbe in, he figures it out. It's not in advance. Same thing went for Vegapunk. This is especially obvious in character designs like Kaido and Ryoukugyu who are teased early, and look nothing like their final design. Cause Oda hadn't figured the characters out yet.

Other times, he makes something up on the spot and realises he can connect that back to something he did in an earlier part of the story. Make a bit of connective tissue so that the world and story seems more fleshed out.

It's also well known that the Supernovas did not exist in any plan at all until he was writing that arc and his editor suggested it. Sabaody didn't have enough going on for his editors liking, so they suggested maybe giving Luffy some rivals, Oda liked the idea and just threw in these 9 new characters off the cuff which have ended up being essential to the plot. Also, the Warlords weren't in Oda's plan, it was just the Emperors, but Oda decided he wanted another group for Luffy to fight through first.

It's reasonably well understood that the famous Kinemon moment from Wano, is Oda commenting on himself and how fans see him. He makes shit up as he goes, but he does it so well people assume he's planned it the entire time.

Oda had a good mind for thinking ahead. Sometimes he’ll plant seeds for something he knows he won’t use for years, other times he’ll cleverly connect plot points from the past shortly before making use of them. 

I definitely aspire to think thoroughly with my work like him one day.

I don't know Oda's writing style. However the main question I can answer. You plot out your story ahead of time. You plan the story before you write. So you know where you're writing to. There are various ways to do it because everyone is different.

Go with the flow man.

Arcs.

What is "plan ahead"?

Leave minor mysteries that you can return to and develop if need be.

Example: My MC was given a pamphlet from a random organization. If I need to I can return to it at a later time or just trash it.

He obviously doesn't.

You think a story that has been going on so long is supposed to have a coherent start, middle and end? Hahaha

Everyone watching/reading that crap is being strung along for a ride.

Likely he just made the shit up on the fly.

I have two kinds of twists:

• They're known in advance, so I plan them out and insert foreshadowing.

• They aren't known in advance, so I build them onto what has already happened, or what is already known.

Sometimes it's a combination -- I get an idea based on things that have already happened, and that gives me enough time to also plant foreshadowing.

Usually, writers will start at the end so that they are revealing the story from end to start, then write it from start to finish so that plot twists or reveals can be planned out and effective, this is probably seen most in mystery stories. In something like One Piece that is as long as it is, I think it was originally meant to be a lot shorter, then the popularity got so big so fast that Oda decided to just keep it going. I suspect he's got a lot of plot points mapped out, as he has stated he does have an ending in mind years ago, but also makes up some stuff on the go because he knows what works and doesn't by now that he wouldn't need to spend a lot of time planning details out.

Good writers plan a shit ton of things in advance. Like they basically know their entire story before they publish the first chapter.

Oda doesnt tho. He makes up stuff as he goes.

Oda doesn't seem to plan all that much outside of the arc he's writing. Like, he didn't even start thinking about what the One Piece was until recently. He wrote Gol Rodger's reaction to it without knowing what it was. I think that suggests he's more the type of writer to develop on plot threads and hooks as he goes rather than making a detailed plan