Want a better way to bond with your teen? Try writing a novel together

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford was once asked for his 10 rules for writing. Rule No. 2: “Don’t have children.”

Of course, there are plenty of other successful authors who’ve had kids.

There’s also another way: Write with your children.

That’s what Ty Thompson has been doing since November 2022. He and his 14-year-old daughter, Vaughn, who live in Lake View, have just finished book II of their fantasy series, “Daniel the Different & the Unfinished Prophecy.”

And theirs might be one solution for parents looking to both bond with a teen and cobble together an itinerary for the looming summer break.

“I had thought that if we write a few chapters and she gets bored with it and wants to stop, then we’ll stop,” said Vaughn’s dad, chatting in the kitchen of their sunlight-flooded home. “We were having so much fun writing it that we kept going.”

Ty Thompson, 45, isn’t a writer. He’s in sales, but he recognized early on his daughter’s love of reading and writing.

“I love to read a lot of things, but fantasy is the thing that I always come back to,” Vaughn said, breaking into a grin revealing a full set of braces.

“At bedtime, she just blurted out, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to write a story about a boy who falls asleep and wakes up in this dream world and then when he falls asleep in the dream world, he wakes up back in the real world?’” he recalled from a conversation with his daughter when she was 10 and in fourth grade.

And so they began telling the tale of “Everworld,” where Daniel, the protagonist, encounters dogs with four heads, cats with nine tails, a candy store fluttering with flying chocolate bars and an ominous green cloud that threatens to destroy the dream world.

Anyone who has attempted to write a novel (including this reporter), knows how lonely the experience can be and how inspiration is often fleeting.

But when you’re sharing the writing — in this case, alternating chapters — it’s like running a marathon with a buddy by your side.

“Vaughn will write something that will inspire me,” Ty Thompson said. “She’ll come up with something that I didn’t think about; it allows me to build off of that.”

It took them eight months to write their first novel, they said.

There were occasional creative differences. It helps if you’re willing to put your ego aside, Vaughn’s dad said.

“Definitely. She told me my first chapter stunk,” he said.

When they’d finished the first draft, they hired a professional editor at a cost of about $1,500.

“She helped us see [the novel] from the 30,000-foot view and, then, [helped with] specifics,” Ty Thompson said.

They took what they’d learned from that experience and didn’t feel the need to hire an editor for the sequel, which is set to be released May 20.

The novel is self-published, with a cover designed by a professional artist the family hired. The first book has sold about 300 copies, the father-and-daughter duo said.

As debut novelists, they haven’t yet figured out how to navigate the sometimes-maddening world of literary agents and publishers. But they hope that if the books do well enough in online sales that perhaps “Daniel the Different” might one day appear in a more traditional setting.

“I really, really, really want to go into a bookstore and see it on a bookstore shelf,” Vaughn said.

She says she hasn’t shown her finished novel to the other kids at school.

“My classmates are wonderful. But some of them are just very blunt and they say exactly what they think, and sometimes that’s not exactly what you want,” she said.

Father and daughter hope to inspire other parents to work with their children, in whatever way works.

“We hope that any parent who reads this …, they just go, ‘What’s my kid really into that I can get behind?’” Ty Thompson said.

Vaughn’s mother, Stacie Thompson, is fully behind the project.

“I’ve always felt badly for Ty,” she said. “He doesn’t have a son. We just have one girl. This is such a cool thing that he gets to have with her that is uniquely theirs and really fun and special.”

And what does she think of their work?

“I actually legitimately think it’s an excellent book,” she said.