The present contribution is toward the systematic characterization and development of a one-dimensional incremental viscoelastic (VE) model for thermo-rheologically complex materials (called “VisCoR”) for the prediction of residual stresses and shape distortions in composites. Traditionally, models that have been developed for this purpose within the composites industry are based on incremental linear elastic methods. While these methods are robust, they fall short in predicting exact behaviour of large composite parts and high temperature composites where relaxation effects also play a vital role in the final shape of the part. Moreover, these models also do not consider the dependency of stresses on temperature and degree of cure. Although viscoelastic models have been formulated, they are not in an incremental form (which is suitable for Finite Element (FE) simulations), hence requiring higher computational efforts. The presented model is an incremental form and requires lesser computational cost and characterization efforts and most importantly takes into account the effect of temperature and degree of cure. Preliminary studies indicate that the incremental 1D viscoelastic model can accurately model VE stress relaxation behaviour when compared to exact solutions.