1.8 Complication / Problem

What’s a story without a complication or problem? It’s not a story that’s what it is. Every story has to have some sort of situation to keep the reader interested. Everything from comedy sitcoms to children cartoons contains situations that the characters encounter. It’s in all literature and should be in our One-Shot. With a Climax, Ending, and Introduction we already have an idea of what our problem will be. So let’s see where it takes place in our structure.



As you can see it takes place early on. I mentioned before how we could start off with an incident, this doesn’t mean it will be the problem. The problem could come from the repercussions of that incident. It’s also a great location to introduce either the Protagonist or the Antagonist. No matter who we choose to introduce first, all our main characters need to be in either the Introduction or the Complication so they can play their roles in the rest of our story.

This section, like the Climax, takes up 2 Pagination Areas. However unlike the Climax that should be one scene that takes up both Pagination Areas, or 4 pages. The Complication/Problem can be broken into two separate scenes for each Pagination Area. The choice of whether or not we should do that will depend on our story, as well as what we want to draw. We’ll have to ask ourselves a question, will it have action or will it be a conversation? Those two things are what our One-Shot will consist of, and both of those are going to be handled differently. We’ll get into that when we get to paneling, but for now just knowing where the Complication / Problem will occur, and what it might consist of is good enough for now.

This is an esential read. Also be sure to check out Scott's website to explore other ideas and exercises. Like the 24 hour comic.












Even if you prefer manga, this book is old school. It's full of the basics to get the ball rolling.












Even more old school. This is a must have book to learn how to create Sequential Art. Even the pros use this book.












There are a ton of How to Draw Manga Books, but this one is the complete package. It covers everything one will need to know to get started. Highly recommended.