Discussion Main / StoryArc

i would say yes, because an arc is like an ongoing plotline. So there can be a few arcs in one book.

The way I see it is that one book in a series (of books) is like an "episode" of the story. In that light, an arc would be a story that spans two or more books in a series, but not all the books. It's certainly possible, but then again: a lot of book series only focus on a single story, possibly from the viewpoint of multiple characters (see "A Song of Ice and Fire" by G.R.R.Martin) or are set up as "one book per story, multiples of them set in the same universe".(see the "Jack Reacher" books by Jim Grant (better known under his pen name, Lee Child)

I am not here to defend traditional literary criticism, but I would point out that a novel is by its nature a self-contained account of a lasting and essential development, usually of character as it pertains to a human being's relationship to other human beings or the world at large.

A novel can indeed have multiple plot lines, but there should be a central and essential development at its core. A Suitable Boy is a novel with very many characters, all of whom develop novelistically in their own right - but the Indian nation is the essential, central character in the book and the question at its core is how the Indian people can or should redefine themselves after the English have left. Come to think of it, much the same can be said of Midnight's Children.

In SF, the thing being developed is quite often an idea (Huxley, Lem, Keyes...), where the human characters little more than cyphers. For this reason, literary types tend to disparage even very good SF. Most SF is much worse, of course, offering neither development of human character nor development of profound ideas.

Insofar as a Jack Reacher has literary merit, the instalments would best be regarded as alternate versions of the same book. (I think it was García Márquez who observed that any given writer only has one novel in him/her anyway and produces alternate versions of that book; but he was talking philosophically, not referring to a series set in a common fictional universe.)

For TV shows and epic fantasy cycles, the main characters are often set to be the same people at the end of an episode that they were at the beginning and this requirement is incompatible with the defining hallmark of a novel (but not the short story or novella). The writers would have to carefully plan an arc over all its seasons or volumes for the story to be "novelistic".

Lost was initially said to have this as its unique selling point, but the creators' assurances that they "had it all planned out" were taken too seriously by the fans, forcing the makers to up the ante all the way to inevitable disappointment.

IRL, planning all seasons or volumes in advance is impossible. Shows get cancelled. Books that sell will get sequels until the break-even point is reached. Serious literary aspirations are hardly compatible with the realities of pop culture.