John wrote on Nov 10
th, 2009 at 10:47pm:
Ok fair point Elock. What I meant by issue by issue was that the story has no set start or end. Kind of like how comics were in the 70s and 80s. There were adventures, but there were subplots and things took many months to grow and establish.
Well then I think the major story arc approach is different from the issue-by-issue approach I was thinking of (which means everything doesn't tie into one bigger theme).
1. To me, issue-by-issue means that you have adventures that don't wrap together under one major arc. Most of these issue-by-issue adventures didn't lead together into one big story arc in the 1970s. When they did, it was an exception. This might be like the b/w Essential repritings Marvel sells today or the Showcase issues of DC, 30 issues in a row, some one-shot stories, some multi-part stories, but no overarching theme.
2. The beginning, middle, end approach sounds like you do one module at a time, then move on (like isolated mini-series). That's really common in a dungeon-dweller approach to RPGs; when you head back outside, the monsters stay underground and the party goes home. This might be like the color-reprints of the Kree-Skrull War or Secret Wars.
3. But a major story arc, with many adventures under one umbrella sounds like its own thing. Major story arcs, with lots of foreshadowing and interwoven adventures seem much more common in comics now than they were in the 1970s, as Marvel and DC announce and package series that way. To me, this is the approach that today sounds like writing for the trade: 52, Secret Wars, Dark Reign.
It was confusing to hear the term story arc in contrast to beginning/middle/end because a story arc usually means that there is a beginning/middle/end--that's the arc, whether it takes place over one issue or many.