Huge thanks for this, George - so useful. FWIW, When I get asked about the difference about plot and story I quote Paul Ashton of the BBC's Writer's Room - their script-development website: "Story is the journey you make, plot is the route you take".

Even if the term "journey" sets my cliché-alarm screeching, as well as the term "plot" making many writerly souls shrivel, it seems to me that there's something useful inside Ashton's idea.

The reader's evolving experience as they progress through the text? We could call that story. The physical incidents that embody and therefore create that progress in the reader? We could call that plot.

And, of course the writer might figure either or both out before they set out on a first draft - or they might start sketching the draft and find out in do so what both things are. And most of us probably move between the two modes depending on the day and the hour and the project.