When I Was Old / Story guide
The plan
The plan for When I Was Old: who's in it, where it happens, and how the story is meant to go. Nothing's written yet, so all of this will change as it gets written. Anything past the setup is folded under a spoiler.
Characters
The older traveler
An old man who travels into his own past; the point-of-view character
An older man who can travel back into his own life. He's reflective, lonely and full of regret, and he goes back to watch the key moments of his youth, sure that if he stepped in he could make that life better.
Spoilers
Watching turns into meddling: money left where his younger self will find it, fights stopped before they start, and thoughts of stopping bigger events. He falls in love with a woman he meets in the past and has to choose between staying with her and going home. Then he learns that his own interference caused the tragedies that shaped him, her death and his father's among them, and he spirals into despair. With a kind woman's help he stops going back, accepts what he can't undo, and chooses the present: "That was a different me, that was when I was old."
The younger traveler
The same man, young
The protagonist as a young man: idealistic, impulsive, resilient and hopeful about the future. He has no idea his older self is watching.
Spoilers
All he wants is to live his life freely. Without knowing it, he's living a life that isn't fully his own, because many of its good and bad turns were arranged by his older self.
The woman in the past
The love interest
A woman the older traveler meets on one of his trips into the past. She's kind, free-spirited and very much in the present, and she tells him plainly to stop rewriting history.
Spoilers
She stands for everything he's missing by living in memory, and she wants him to see that life is for living, not watching. She becomes the turning point of his life. She dies in an accident, and he comes to learn that his own interference caused it.
The kind woman
The one who helps him let go
A compassionate, understanding woman who appears late in the story.
Spoilers
She finds the older traveler at his lowest, after he learns what his meddling has done, and helps him confront his mistakes, accept that a life can't be rewritten and find his way back to a meaningful present.
His father
The traveler's father
The traveler's father, part of the young life the older man goes back to watch.
Spoilers
His death is one of the tragedies that shaped the traveler, and the older man learns it was a result of his own interference.
Things
The trips back
How he reaches his past
The older man can travel into his own past. How he does it is never explained; it's dreamlike rather than technical.
Spoilers
The one rule that matters is that observation slides into interference, and interference ripples. Every change he makes loops back on itself, so the very things he tries to prevent come to pass because of him.
The accident
The tragedy at the center of the book
An accident in the traveler's past, one of the moments his life turned on.
Spoilers
It kills the woman he loves. It's the pivot of the book: he realizes the accident was his fault, caused by his own attempts to protect his younger self, and the realization sends him into a downward spiral.
Story beats
Show the planned beatsSpoilers for the whole plan
Movement One: Observing the Past
- Going back to watch
The older traveler returns to key moments of his life, disconnected from the present and consumed by the wish to fix the past.
- Watching himself
He watches his younger self from a distance, reminiscing over his decisions, and slowly starts to believe he could make that life better.
Movement Two: Interventions and Love
- Small fixes
He starts to step in, leaving money for his younger self and stopping fights before they happen.
- Bigger ideas
He considers stopping major events, and loses sight of the fact that he's no longer living in his own present.
- The woman in the past
On one trip he meets a kind, free-spirited woman, and they fall in love.
- Stay or go home
She warns him against rewriting history and urges him to live for today, and he faces a choice between staying with her in the past and returning to his own time.
Movement Three: The Tragic Realization
- His own doing
He learns that his protective meddling caused the tragedies that shaped him: the accident that killed the woman he loved, and his father's death.
- The spiral
Devastated by guilt, he's caught in a cycle of regret he can't undo.
Movement Four: Rehabilitation and Redemption
- The kind woman
A kind woman finds him and helps him come to terms with what he's done, and he begins to focus on the present.
- When I was old
He accepts his mistakes and lets the past go: "That was a different me, that was when I was old."
- No more trips
He stops visiting the past, reflects on the journey, and faces the future with hope and acceptance.