Story Arc

A story arc (a contraction of "over-arcing storyline") is a sequence of episodes that puts characters through their paces in response to a single impetus; basically, an ongoing storyline. This can be a few episodes, an entire season, or even the focus of the entire series.

Arcs are not necessarily consecutive episodes. The story may reach a point where, although the arc is not completely resolved, it ceases to be of immediate concern to the characters, thus allowing the writers to intersperse (or insert) non-arc episodes.

Writers may decide to use a stand-alone episode to lighten the mood during a dark arc, or to feature a character not involved in the arc. For example, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Go Fish," which aired between "I Only Have Eyes For You" and "Becoming" during the second season, has very little to do with the Angelus storyline.

Episodes that form a story arc cannot be run out of order, or at least they shouldn't be. Not that this always stops networks or syndicators from doing so.

While the Soap Opera has been exclusively arc-based since the beginning of television and before, the recent popularity of arcs doesn't seem to come from soaps. Back in the 90's when half-funny Sit Com reruns and poorly constructed Saturday morning cartoons ruled with an iron fist, the consensus among writers was that casual viewers wouldn't be able to get into the show. Hill Street Blues was the first American prime-time drama to rely on arcs, and is probably when the term came into the American TV vernacular. British Shows have a longer-standing tradition of arcs (See Doctor Who).

According to Doctor Who producer Russell T Davies, the term is not used by UK TV writers. However, it is becoming increasingly well known by UK viewers, and UK Comic Book writers certainly use the term.

Story arcs also occur in most other serial media; Superhero and Dramedy comic series (especially online series in the latter case) are well known for them, and since they lack the seasonal format of most Western television shows, some of them take years to resolve.

See also Myth Arc, Half Arc Season, Plot Threads, Season Fluidity, and Aborted Arc.

Anime

 * The vast majority of Anime series are built around arcs, which further distinguishes them from American cartoons, which are very often episodic (though less exclusively so in recent years).
 * The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya's six-episode arc was broadcast with eight Breather Episodes that flashed forward to after the arc. It also successfully broke the rule of never showing a story arc out of order.
 * Helped largely by the fact that the Arc episodes were still in order, just with the Breathers inserted in-between.
 * According to a fansite's unofficial commentary, Neon Genesis Evangelion can be divided into four arcs:
 * Prologue Arc, from the beginning to the Jet Alone Filler.
 * Action Arc, ending with Iruel. Focus is on humor; this part is just like any other mecha series.
 * Descent Arc, ending with Zeruel. Mind Screw kicks into high gear in this part and the viewer starts having an inkling things are not what they seem to be.
 * The site named the final arc "Bitter End". Kinda apt, considering what happens here. Even more Mind Screw with a side order of Nightmare Fuel. The part that made the franchise famous.

Film

 * Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III the Search For Spock and Star Trek IV the Voyage Home form a story arc within the larger Star Trek movie series centered around the Genesis device and the consequences of its use. All other Star Trek movies have self-contained plots.
 * Though Star Trek VI the Undiscovered Country does contain multiple references to this particular trilogy.

Live Action TV

 * The canonical British TV show with a Story Arc is The Prisoner, which was created from the get-go with a beginning, middle and end, and is also used as an example of the TV Novel.
 * The X Files (see Myth Arc)
 * Alias -- So heavily, in fact, that there was significant Continuity Lock Out experienced by casual viewers.
 * Babylon 5 (another Myth Arc)
 * The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. had two intertwining story arcs throughout the series (The Search for The Orb and The Capture of the John Bly Gang).
 * Star Trek Deep Space Nine has several, featuring battles against the Maquis, the Jem'Hadar, and finally the Dominion as a whole.
 * Star Trek Voyager experimented with a Story Arc format in its second season, with an ongoing plotline centred around Seska's machinations with the Kazon against Voyager and Tom Paris's attempts to flush out a mole in their midst. This arc was rather tepidly recieved, and once it reached its conclusion, the writers on that seried never really tried another (or at least not one so ambitious).
 * Previously episodic in format, Star Trek Enterprise introduced an epic story arc with the Xindi war in season three, before settling into a series of loosely-related smaller story arcs in season four.
 * Each season of Lost has a main Story Arc, each with numerous subplots and mini-arcs, and each contributing to the Myth Arc (which can best be summed up by the question "Why are these people on the Island?"). Each season's Story Arc also has a central conflict and/or division:
 * Season One is about the Losties learning how to survive on the Island and dividing into two camps: one on the beach and one at the caves.
 * Season Two is about finding the Hatch, pushing the button and the psychological effect of it; the Tailies, another group of plane survivors, are introduced.
 * Season Three reveals a lot about the Others, the Island's native inhabitants, and builds towards a confrontation between them and the Losties.
 * Season Four
 * Season Five
 * Season Six
 * Doctor Who has a few, used for combo DVD sets, when a clear follow-on is present.
 * Season 8's arc introduced the Master, who was a common villain in each serial and was captured by UNIT in the Season Finale.
 * The Key To Time arc (all of Season 16) - the search for pieces of a Cosmic Keystone.
 * The E-Space Trilogy (Full Circle, State of Decay and Warriors' Gate)
 * Following directly on from this was the season-crossing Return of the Master trilogy, comprising The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis and Castrovalva, released as New Beginnings on DVD as it also took in the Fourth Doctor's regeneration into the Fifth.
 * The Black Guardian Trilogy (Mawdryn Undead, Terminus and Enlightenment) - involving Turlough's relationship with the Black Guardian.
 * The Trial of a Time Lord (Season 23 -- the first 12 episodes consisted of three distinct stories with a common Framing Device, which took over as the main story for the two-part Season Finale)
 * In addition, thematic arcs showed up in the classic series: season 18 concerned the theme of entropy and decay, in preparation for the regeneration in the final episode; each serial of season 20 involved the return of a classic enemy, building up to the movie-length special "The Five Doctors".
 * Since the revival, the series has opted for season-long loose arcs, mostly linked together through recurring phrases and motifs, though usually unnoticed and not really interfering with the episode's main plots. Series 6 has adopted a tighter arc format, though the episodic format remains.
 * Series 1:
 * Series 2:
 * Series 3:
 * Series 4:
 * Series 5:.
 * Series 6:
 * Surprisingly, The Beverly Hillbillies used story arcs in a Network Sit Com all the way back in the early 1960s.
 * Mrs. Driesdale's multi-episode psychotic breakdown after living next to the Clampets, combined with the Clampets' attempts to "help" her.
 * The Clampets' acquisition of an English Manor and their subsequent "War of the Roses" with their alcoholic neighbor. This was spread over several seasons.
 * Ellie May's engagement to a "Naval Frogman" and Granny's belief that this means he turns into a frog from the bellybutton down when he gets wet. Lasted most of a season.
 * Probably the oldest one in television is I Love Lucy, which featured several long-running arcs. The most famous is Lucy's pregnancy, which took up a full season from her first learning of it to giving birth and bringing Little Ricky home. Subsequent seasons followed the Ricardos and Mertzes on long trips through Europe, the US, and a stay in Hollywood.
 * The re-imagined series of Battlestar Galactica Reimagined had plenty of story arcs, particularly in the first and second seasons, which led to Executive Meddling in the third season for more standalone episodes so that new viewers were not alienated. As a result, the third season is generally not as well liked, and the fourth and final season has resumed a more arc-based approach. The main arcs throughout the series are:
 * Finding Earth.
 * Roslin's Cancer.
 * Baltar's Treachery.
 * Starbuck's Destiny.
 * The Identity and Origins of the Humanoid Cylons.
 * Britcom Allo Allo might be the most humorously convoluted example of this and certainly for a Sit Com, being a comedy gave the writers numerous excuses to resolve them in absurdist manners.
 * Supernatural has one every season so far, generally building on the previous arc and moving toward the series' overall Myth Arc.
 * Season One has the boys' search for their father, and the demon that killed their mother by extension.
 * Season Two is essentially the same as the first season, save for the fact that they Brothers Winchester are now searching solely for the Yellow-Eyed Demon,
 * Season Three deals with the repercussions of
 * Season Four begins to really wrestle with the Myth Arc, with the boys, and introducing
 * Season Five is, so far, all about, and to a smaller extent,.
 * Season Six has multiple interconnected plot lines:
 * Season Seven deals with the fallout from  at the end of the previous season, primarily the release of the Leviathans and their plans to Take Over the World.
 * In any given season, The Wire tends to have half-a-dozen story arcs at one time. At least. And they are all awesome.
 * Disney's Zorro, which ran in the late 1950s was organized into arc stories, rather than simply being episodic. Each episode set up a new set of troubles that Zorro would have to deal with in the next episode in logical, linear fashion.
 * Each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has an arc spanning half it's run.
 * Season 1: The Master's attempts to escape his can and open the Hellmouth.
 * Season 2: Technically the fights between Buffy and Spike count as an arc, but the real arc doesn't start until Angel loses his soul and becomes Angelus again.
 * Season 3: The Mayor's plans to become a pure demon, and Faith's.
 * Season 4: Buffy adjusting to college life and dealing with The Initiative, whose experiments ultimately lead to the rise of Adam.
 * Season 5: Buffy dealing with Dawn's arrival,  death, and Glory's plans.
 * Season 6: Willow dealing with her addiction to magic, and Buffy trying to provide for Dawn while also getting tormented by the Trio.
 * Season 7: The First attempts to open the Hellmouth, while Buffy builds an army of Potential Slayers to fight it.
 * CSI did one with the "Miniature Killer", so called because they would leave a perfect scale model of the crime scene there, and which served as the set up at the end to put one of the regulars on a bus.
 * Dexter has naturally fallen into this, as its entire first season was an adaptation of one novel. Subsequent seasons have each carried their own story arc.
 * Season 1 focuses on the hunt for the ruthless Ice Truck Killer, who is revealed in the end to be
 * Season 2 revolves around
 * Season 3 introduces Miguel Prado, who ends up
 * Season 4 centers around Dexter's life as
 * Season 5 pits Dexter against a gang of serial rapists led by
 * Season 6 opts for a religion-centric plot, where a mysterious force dubbed the Doomsday Killer strikes in Miami and uses his victims' bodies to enact tableaus from the Book of Revelations. It also sees the
 * Weeds contains over-arcing storylines, although they aren't necessarily clearly-defined between seasons, and they sometimes aren't so much resolved as they are escaped from. This gives it a quality of drifting from situation to situation that fits its stoner subject matter, while characters from unresolved plotlines sometimes resurface later.
 * I Carly has an arc that started from the final episode of Season 4, titled iOMG and continues in the first four episodes of Season 5, dealing with Sam's feelings for Freddie. Notable in being one of the only examples of a Kid Com having a Story Arc, especially for the big two of Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.
 * Seinfeld, despite being a "show about nothing", did have a few plotlines that ran in the background of several seasons: Kramer writing and publishing a coffee table book (about coffee tables), Jerry and George writing a TV pilot, George's engagement to Susan, etc.
 * Wizards of Waverly Place is known for it's many story arcs. Each season had quite a few of them, most of them running concurrently.
 * Season 2: The "Wizards vs. Vampires" arc, which dealt with Justin's relationship with Juliet and her parents.
 * Season 3: The "Chronicles of Moises" arc, which dealt with Justin becoming a monster hunter, and Max releasing his conscience. This arc ended with Juliet being captured by the mummy. The next arc in Season 3 was the "Wizards vs. Werewolves" saga, which detailed Alex's growing relationship with Mason, and eventually tied itself with the "Chronicles of Moises" arc. The "Stevie" arc followed, and dealt with Stevie's arrival in New York and her wizard revolution. The "Wizards Exposed" arc came next, where the Russo's are captured and taken to a government facility.
 * Season 4: The beginning of Season 4 continued the "Wizards Exposed" arc, which ended with Alex and Justin having to start over in the wizard competition, and Alex deciding to get back in so she could be with Mason. The next arc was the "Maxine" arc, where Max was transformed into a little girl named Maxine. It began with "Three Maxes and a Little Lady", and concluded with "Back To Max". The "Maxine" arc ran concurrently with the next major arc, the "Wizards vs. Angels" saga, which dealt with the Angels of Darkness. The last major arc was the "Apartment 13B" arc, starting with "Wizards of Apartment 13B" and ending with "Wizards vs. Everything". The last arc merges the "Wizards vs. Angels" arc with the "Wizards vs. Werewolves" arc.
 * Each season of Round the Twist has a different arc. The first two seasons contained different ghost stories, for Season 3 it was a Viking Love Book, and Season five concerned a mysterious knight.
 * Each of season White Collar revolve around a specific overarching storyline that continues from the previous one
 * Season 1: Neal's search for Kate and.
 * Season 2:
 * Season 3:

Newspaper Comics

 * Beetle Bailey doesn't usually have much continuity, but over the decades, there have been a handful of arcs connecting the strips (actual longer stories for albums notwithstanding), including at least "Beetle arrives at college," "Beetle joins the army," "Beetle goes home on holiday alone," "Beetle goes home on holiday with Sarge," "Beetle goes on holiday at home with Sarge and Otto," "Zero goes on holiday home with Beetle and Sarge," and "Sarge briefly tries to leave the army but comes back."
 * Calvin and Hobbes has several, some of them connecting into larger arcs, like the ones involving different uses of the same invention (all of which inventions tend to be the same cardboard box in different positions anyway).

Video Games

 * The Sonic the Hedgehog series has had a three-game Story Arc dealing with Shadow. It started in Sonic Adventure 2, continued in Sonic Heroes and resolved in Shadow the Hedgehog.
 * In City of Heroes series of missions are actually referred to as story arcs, another way to capture the feel of comic books.
 * Each of the original games in the When They Cry series are their own arc. Later remakes tend to have multiple arcs in one game though.
 * The King of Fighters splits up its ongoing, sometimes confusing plot into arcs, each with rotating protagonist duties. 94 was a stand-alone title meant to kick off this Mascot Fighter, but is now commonly referred to as "The Rugal Saga". 95 simultaneously ends this story with Rugal's Karmic Death via Superpower Meltdown and begins "The Orochi Saga", which climaxes in 97 when Kyo Kusanagi literally punches out Orochi with help from Iori Yagami and Chizuru Kagura. 99-2001 was "The NESTS Chronicles", chronicling an evil cartel's plans for world domination using the DNA of a captured Kyo to create human bioweapons. One of these is K', a stoic Knight in Sour Armor who ends NESTS' ambitions by defeating their top-ranked executives. 2003 started "The Tales of Ash", detailing Ash Crimson, a enigmatic man who uses others for his own purposes, and Those From the Past, a mysterious cult intent on unsealing Orochi. XIII seems to be the conclusion of this part of the story, as Fans can generally expect a new arc to pick up if the last title was a Dream Match Game (XII notwithstanding).
 * The Kirby series had a Story Arc nicknamed the "Dark Matter Trilogy" consisting of Kirby's Dream Land 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards because all three deal with Kirby and his animal friends dealing with the threat of Dark Matter on Popstar and its solar system. These games were not produced by Masahiro Sakurai but Shinichi Shimomura. This is noticeable because all three share a puzzle-solving structure instead of the more combat-oriented structure of the other games.
 * Mass Effect basically runs on one big story arc involving the Reapers and the Normandy's battles against them. (with a ton of little subplots and side story arcs added in). Each game has the crew facing a diffrent threat which is related to the Reapers.
 * Game 1: The fight against Saren and his attempts to grant the Reapers access to our universe.
 * Game 2: The crew investigating and attempting to stop the mysterious abductions of entire human colonies by the Collectors.
 * Game 3: The crew and everyone else fighting the Reaper invasion of Earth.

Webcomics

 * You'd be hard pressed to find a Sluggy Freelance strip that doesn't lead up to or follow up on another strip. Most of them do both. Even if you counted sub-chapters (technically called stories, so calling them arcs as well is a bit redundant) or even chapters for "episodes", there are still storylines arcing over those, up to Myth Arc level. Even the Filler Strips often come in series (of stories, not just strips): The Return of Stick-Figure Week!
 * In the tradition of old-style Newspaper Comics serials (the author/narrator has mentioned a fondness for Lee Falk's catchphrase, "Next--New Adventure!"), the story arcs in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob each have a clear beginning and ending, usually with a couple of stand-alone strips in between arcs. These arcs run for months, although they usually only cover a day or two in-universe.
 * Everything except filler in El Goonish Shive. Also has a Myth Arc, though it has spent the past few years lurking in the background.
 * Living With Insanity used to be a comic strip with the occasional story arc, but now is mostly story arcs.
 * Both Dragon City and Jix both started off as a gag-a-day strips, despite having an ongoing story, but both became arc based. This is because the writer has a hard time writing jokes without having a story in place to joke about.
 * The Packrat had only one Story Arc so far, and that was the time travel story from January 2011 to February 2012.

Web Original

 * The web fiction serial Dimension Heroes has an ongoing story arc, broken up into several smaller books.
 * The Epic Tales series Shadow Hawk has an ongoing arc about Shadow Hawk wanting to get revenge on the Shapeshifter, who killed his father. It also has a subplot arc about how he got a girl pregnant in the first story.
 * Each 'chapter' of The Mad Scientist Wars is usually a self contained storyline- but as the gae has been going on, more and more storylines will run somewhat through other chapter. For instance, 'Chic's Family' has been going on since the Mad Sci Con chapter.
 * Atop the Fourth Wall has had these ever since Mechakara's introduction.
 * The Nostalgia Critic's had a long-running, slightly Yo Yo Plot Point one about his love/hate relationship with his job.
 * The Nostalgia Chick's had a few, the most obvious being the Dark Nella Saga.
 * Although the setting in We Are Our Avatars is easily changed with some effective roleplaying, some longer arcs have been implemented. After the move to Role-playing, there's always been one.
 * Also, an Alternate Universe resolution to the final conflict of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S tied in to User:Mapi's Mega Crossover fanfic.
 * A truly epic arc concerning vampires, which began with the introduction of an Alternate Universe Future Badass version of Flandre Scarlet and came to its conclusion with the defeat of none other than The Lord of Evil, Dracula himself. The more over-arcing Are machines sentient? arc, began with the freeing of Dee and her sister Bit.
 * One of the largest involved Father's attemps to remake the multiverse, and destroy the Fourth Wall.
 * Anyone who wants to can usually kick off an arc, and several plots sometimes run at once. Fortunately, this doesn't seem to have become too confusing.

Western Animation

 * The first season of the Dilbert animated series had a story arc regarding the company's new flagship product: The Gruntmaster 3000. It covered things such as producing, marketing, and site-testing. The story was frequently broken up with non-arc episodes.
 * Exo Squad had not only the primary story arc (the struggle between the Terrans and the Neo Sapiens), but it was also broken into smaller four or five episode long mini arcs, with the action typically focusing on a particular theater of the war. On the DVD release, each mini-arc gets its own name in addition to the episode titles.
 * Justice League Unlimited had one in the second season, dealing with the fight between the League and Project Cadmus, and another in the third season focusing on the Secret Society/Legion of Doom.
 * Transformers: Beast Wars had arcs a-plenty. The first season often leaving a viewer wondering What Happened to The Mouse, until, several episodes later, just when they'd almost forgotten, it was revealed. The second and third seasons, however, are more serialized. Skip an episode, and you'll miss at least one thing that's worth knowing later. You won't be left completely hanging, but you won't get what's going on as well as a more devoted viewer, either.
 * The Sequel Series, Beast Machines, has some of the strongest continuity of any cartoon ever aired. The whole thing is a series of Arcs.
 * Transformers Animated follows arc structure as well, with Season 1 focusing on Megatron's attempts to rebuild his body (with his eventual success covered in the finale), and Season 2 dealing with the Decepticons' plot to build a space bridge to Cybertron. Season 3 is a bit more fluid, possibly because a lot of loose ends are getting tied up.
 * Though his higher-ups demanded a strictly toy deal series for the lines of action figures, story editor John Semper managed to "sneak in" overarching storylines and development into Spider Man the Animated Series. Naming each season and referring to episodes as "chapters" probably didn't hurt. By the time they realized what he had done, and despite limited animation and extremely restrictive censorship, the show had become the number 1 cartoon in America. Nonetheless, they still didn't let him join in on the Spider-Man Unlimited spinoff, which was primarily stand-alone format and petered out after barely reaching 13 episodes.
 * The Spectacular Spider Man also has story arcs: four per season (with one arc having four episodes and the rest having three.) Each episode in an arc has a Theme Naming title.
 * The X-Men cartoon of the 90s did this as well, going through a number of arcs that were featured in the comic books, including the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix sagas.
 * The 1981 Spider-Man cartoon (the solo one, before Amazing Friends) had a story arc, stretched across five episodes, surrounding Doctor Doom's attempts to conquer the world and the developing situation in his home country of Latveria.
 * Gargoyles had a subtle arc about Brooklyn's coming of age that became a flaring beacon of story awesomeness in the episode, "Kingdom," when you realize this is what the previous Brooklyn stories have been building toward. Also, there are multi-episode arcs that are more blatant, most infamously the "Avalon World Tour".
 * The second season of Sonic the Hedgehog's "SatAM" cartoon started off more continuity-based to begin with, then kicked into full-on, development-a-week arc mode with the launch of the Doomsday Project.
 * Iron Man Armored Adventures, in addition to it's main Myth Arc, features other story arcs, usually following a specific character over the course of the show (for example, the Living Laser's origin and him figuring out what to do with his new powers and then his eventual downfall). These story arcs also end up combining and become more narrow as the show goes on (The Living Laser story arc ends up fusing with the A.I.M story arc later on).
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender's Myth Arc is divided by it's three seasons, which are titled "books". Book 1 is Water, Book 2 is Earth, and Book 3 is Fire. As the names suggest, each arc deals heavily with Aang mastering the elements involved. Also, while Book 1 was more or less one whole arc, each half of Book 2 and Book 3 could be divided into arcs: the Earthbending Training arc, the Ba Sing Se arc, the pre-Solar Eclipse Invasion arc, and the pre-Sozin's Comet / Firebending Training arc.
 * The Secret Saturdays has this:
 * Season One: The Kur Stone Puzzle
 * Season Two: Finding Kur
 * Season Three:
 * Though Batman the Brave And The Bold mostly uses stand alone stories, they do occasionally throw in hints of story arcs, such as.
 * Each Teen Titans season has an overarching plotline, related to one of the core characters:
 * Season One focuses on Robin, with Slade as the Big Bad; the story is mostly about how the two characters are and aren't Not So Different.
 * Season Two focuses on Beast Boy and moreso on Terra, who is.
 * Season Three deals with Cyborg and his escalating enmity with Diabolical Mastermind Brother Blood, who has stolen and abused Cyborg's own technology.
 * Season Four is about Raven and her attempts to avert her destiny- opening a portal to allow her demonic father Trigon the chance to escape his can and conquer the universe.
 * Season Five focuses on the team as a whole and their efforts to stop the Brotherhood of Evil from wiping out a generation of superheroes.
 * Jackie Chan Adventures and its seasonal arcs.
 * Season One: The search for Shendu's talismans.
 * Season Two: Defeating Shendu's demon siblings.
 * Season Three: Finding the animals with the talismans' powers.
 * Season Four: Finding the Shadowkhan masks.
 * Season Five: The search for the chi of the demon sorcerers.
 * Each season of the Total Drama series is essentially this, with a different cast lineup, elimination order, and winner in each one.
 * Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated is notably for being a Scooby Doo series that actually has a Story Arc; specifically, the gang's investigation of the mystery involving the original Mystery Inc. and the supposed "curse" of Crystal Cove.
 * South Park has had several story arcs along with multi-part episodes. Season 3 brought a three-part story arc often called "The Meteor Shower Trilogy", in which each episode was a seperate story about different members of the main cast which all take place on the same night. A three-part mini-arc in season 4 involved Mr. Garrison coming out of the closet, and an arc lasting through the entirety of season 6 involved the absence of Kenny and attempts to replace him.