In contemporary times, a fifteen-year-old creative writing whiz is sent to a gifted creatives summer camp in Massachusetts, where he meets a young male trombonist. As the two become friends and the writer gets to know the trombonist’s family and their troubles, he turns the trombonist and his dying sister into novel characters. Everything changes when the trombonist discovers the writer’s manuscript.

Two men putting on a production for their New York theater company seek out a legendary, elderly actor, but upon finding him, they meet a man as dilapidated as the theater he once worked for.

An old woman visits the small town where she was once a waitress and remembers how she dated a wealthy college student and built a strong relationship with his intelligent mother. After realizing she didn't want to marry him, she shared a spontaneous, emotionally-intimate drive with his troubled older half-brother, who died by suicide just after.

A graduate student at Columbia begins working as a research assistant to an eccentric older man, later discovering that they are looking into the life of a girl who was murdered.

Following a late-stage divorce, a woman suffering from depression and nostalgic for childhood reflects on her romantic and sexual history and her relationship with her mother.

An elderly woman prepares for her death, but is anxious for someone to listen to her precious memories and cherish them after her death.

Though most of a prep school's students are away for the long weekend, a few boys stay behind at the dorms and are invited to dinner with a wealthy boy and his stepmother. At the dinner, the stepmother's attitude and appearance are just as alluring as the food, but the wealthy student acts strange and detached the whole evening.

A creative writing teacher sits through a conference with one his favorite students. He takes us on a journey through the characters in the story, and in his life.

When a new woman catches his eye, an aging barber attempts to break out of his long cycle of failed relationships and accept her for who she is.

A middle-aged man and his wife struggle to keep up with their teenage daughter who they just adopted six months ago, especially when she takes interest in a boy her age.