All the elements of literary analysis admit of description in terms of their distribution throughout the divisions of the text. Take the story of the Iliad. We all know the underlying myth. It resides in our minds as story until one of us makes a novel about Helen's abduction, another writes an opera about the Trojan Horse, and a third choreographs a ballet about Achilles and Patroclus. The surface structure varies from author to author and art form to art form.
Plot is a feature of the surface structure or discourse unit of the narrative in whatever form.
Then complications, conflicts, and crises arise, build to a climax, and finally reach a point of resolution or exhaustion called the denouement. Often plot structures deliberately suppress elements of the story to create mystery, suspense, and a dramatic climax. The evidence for plot is an outline of the major actions in the syntax or arrangement provided by the text. Often a play is thus structured into a number of Acts, but every story admits of analysis in terms of a set of actions. Another way to identify the plot is to block a story off into scenes.