Frederick Moxley is a writer and professor of Prep Writing at a community college. His father, also named Frederick Moxley — though he goes by Fred — is a retired statistics professor who explores new hobbies with his second wife Lara. Frederick has had a difficult relationship with his father since his mother's passing when Frederick was ten years old.

Frederick comes home one day to find his girlfriend Carrie reading a story, which she praises as being his best work, only to discover that the story was written by his father and published in a literary journal that has published his own stories in the past. The son reads his father's story and acknowledges inwardly that it is interesting and well-written, but he refuses to admit this out loud, and instead tells his girlfriend that he finds the story boring and overly sentimental.

For the next few months, Frederick Jr. struggles to write. He often begins a story but gives up after the first few sentences. He starts to cry in class after a student gives him a bag of Cheetos. Soon, he stops writing altogether, and eventually goes to his writing mentor Harry Hodgett for advice. Harry, an older man who seems to speak in riddles and has a drinking problem, tells Frederick that the best writing is based on our wounds from real life. He advises Frederick to talk to his father so that he can use the experience in his writing. Frederick Jr. and Carrie visit Frederick's father and stepmom for Christmas. Frederick begins to read one of his father's newest stories, but he soon falls asleep and imagines the story's ending in a dream. His dream seems to recover a memory from his childhood: Frederick sits on the beach with his father while his mother wades into the ocean. His father tells him for the first time that his mother is very sick. Young Frederick holds his mother's hand and refuses to let go.