Benjamin Clayborne
Auror
E.M. Forster famously opined:
Story is “the king died and then the queen died.” Plot is “the king died and then the queen died of grief.”
By that view, the story is merely a sequence of events, where the plot ties those events together causally and gives meaning to them.
I don't entirely agree, but it's a well-known example and one that I see a lot of writers subscribe to.
I don't understand the point of that distinction. When you're writing something, why would you ever even think about just the series of events that occur, without the causal relationships?