John Beck, a writer and executive producer for According to Jim, describes the often-confused differences between story and plot in an interview that appears in The Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop Guide.
It’s one of the best explanations I have read in a while:
“Story is the conflict and resolution between two of your main characters. The plot is how the story plays out. There are a million different plots you can use to tell the same story, but regardless of how funny the plot is, if the story is lacking, the script will suffer,” he says. “I look at it now like curtains and curtain rods. The story is the rod that holds the curtains up. And no matter how beautiful these curtains are, they will be useless without the curtain rod.”
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