Manga manga depression

[Guest naotanandabsama]

I have recently begun working on my first full-length manga. My problem is that I am 5 panels in and have run out of dialogue to fuel the story. My creation is called : Deus ex Machina, Incantatum Infernum. The story is set in the future about 20 years. The main character, Viesel is born with Stigmata and has become a book burner. All i have is the opening, which shows his interchange over the phone, going to work and that is it. I also have plans for him to fall in love with a Librarian. Does anybody have any suggestions as to how I should go about introducing the the Librarian(she has no name as of yet).???

[Gravy Train]

If the main character has become a book burner (not exactly sure if that just means he burns books) then maybe he can set a section of a library on fire.

[Raiyuu]

[color=DarkGreen][size=1]It sounds to me like you've done what I tend to do when writing fiction, which is to get carried away with the initial concept, then dive headlong into writing (or in this case drawing) without working out the story properly beforehand.

It's important to know what the story is actually going to be before writing. Do you have anything beyond his falling in love with the librarian? What's the significance of his having stigmata, or his being a book-burner? The fact that he burns books is a neat link into how he meets the librarian, she could catch him trying to set her library on fire or something, and you can have a nice interplay between his falling in love with her and her initially despising him for burning books.

But is this a simple love story between the two, or is there something bigger going on here? I think part of the reason you're having trouble writing dialogue is that the purpose of dialogue in literature is to drive the plot, and you're still unsure of what the plot is, so you don't know what to have the dialogue driving towards. I'd suggest taking a breather from drawing the comic itself, and do some serious work on the plot, and once you know what it's going to be, the sequence of events in the strip will flow a lot more naturally for you. If it's the drawing side of things you're doing this for, then try doing some detailed character portraits while mulling over the storyline.

Hope that's helpful.
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