Short answers, pulled from the story.
The phrase story arc first appeared in print in 1973 when Time Magazine used it to describe the movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle. This early usage highlighted how the film balanced action sequences with the suspenseful development of its narrative. Before this moment, writers and critics discussed plot and character development separately.
DC Comics published Superman stories in the 1950s that deliberately avoided permanent change to characters or situations. These narratives created a loop where no growth could occur and storylines repeated over time regardless of the stakes involved. This approach meant that Superman always returned to his status quo after each adventure.
Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces which introduced the concept of the monomyth. This theory laid out the hero's journey as a universal pattern in storytelling describing how a character could move from a situation of weakness to one of strength. Christopher Vogler later expanded on Campbell's ideas in The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.
The Fifth Horseman was a 1946 NBC Radio Summer-run docudrama serial that featured a four-episode arc exploring a hypothetical chain of events surrounding a fictitious nuclear holocaust. This story arc spanned nearly two full future decades and demonstrated how radio could handle complex multi-episode narratives. The series was part of a broader trend of arc-based storytelling that existed for decades.
Most manga and anime series shorter than twenty-six chapters form a single arc that spans all the chapters. Series of thirty chapters or longer such as Bleach, Gin Tama, One Piece, Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Fairy Tail typically feature multiple story arcs. The anime Dragon Ball Z adapted four different story arcs from the Dragon Ball manga each with its own ultimate antagonist.