Plots and Causal Chains

The idea that a plot is a series of events related by cause and effect goes back at least to E.M. Forster, who said, in Aspects of the Novel, that “The king died and then the queen died” was not a plot, merely a set of sequential events, but “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” was a plot because the first event causes the second. Obviously, most novels need a much longer causal chain than that.

Let me pause for a minute to define what a causal chain is and does, in terms of fict...