Etymology of 'arc' as in 'Story arc'

[Mangetout]

I understand what a Story arc is (a continuous/common developing theme or background story in a series of episodes), I just don’t understand how and why it came to be known by the term ‘arc’ - can anyone give me the dope on this?

[Walloon]

Creative writing instruction has long pictured a typical storyline as looking like the profile of a roller coaster hill: beginning, buildup, climax, end.

[Mangetout]

So it’s ‘arc’ in the sense of a curved trajectory, not an abbreviation of architecture, or archive, or some other thing? I don’t have any reason or desire to disbelieve you, but I’d like to see a cite.

[Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker]

An earlier thread on this subject:

What is the origin of "story arc"?

I can’t attest to the accuracy of Bochco’s coining the term, but it at least sounds plausible.

[RealityChuck]

According to the OED:

• orig. Literary Criticism. The principal plot or narrative development of a literary or dramatic work considered in outline form. Now also: spec. (freq. in story arc) a background plot or ongoing storyline in a serial narrative (esp. a television series), within which self-contained episodes are set; an episode or number of episodes which develop such a background story.

1962 F. N. MENNEMEIER in P. Demetz Brecht 148 There is no ‘great dramatic arc’ in Mother Courage… In Brecht’s play there is an artfully static structure which carefully balances individual scenes against each other. 1978 G. STEWART in ELH 45 483 In the proliferated death scenes of Bleak House, Dickens brings death as never before into the pages that intervene between the implied oblivion before and after the arc of story, the unvoiced voids of narrative.

Bochco started using it to describe the multi-episode story lines for Hill Street Blues, which popularized it in a TV context, and brought the term to the general public.