Story structure
Plot
The series of related events in a narrative, linked by cause and effect: what happens, and why each happening leads to the next.
The plot is "the series of related events in a narrative," such that each event, except the final one, affects at least one other. E. M. Forster's test is causal: "The king died, and then the queen died" is only a story, while the queen dying of grief is a plot, because cause now ties the two events together. Plots may run as simple linear sequences or as "complex interwoven structures," and each strand of an interwoven plot is a subplot.
The machinery that moves events along, from the MacGuffin to Chekhov's gun, is catalogued under plot device. For novelists the plot is the causal spine that every structure in this glossary organizes; for serial writers it is also the release rhythm itself, because the cliffhanger turns each plot beat into the pull toward the next chapter.