In his book, The Art of Fiction, John Gardener describes profluence as the requirement of a story to flow forward in a series of connected events. (The word is derived from Latin prōfluentia, ’to flow forth’.) Here is Gardener:
“a story contains profluence, a requirement best satisfied by a sequence of causally related events, a sequence that can end in only one of two ways: in resolution … or in logical exhaustion”