I've been listening to @WritingExcuses Confront the Default podcast (which is really good BTW) It got me thinking about a default I think that is pretty pervasive in fiction and that is the defaults when writing about people experiencing homelessness. writingexcuses.com/2018/09/09/13-…
First of all, my background (for those who don't know) is that I was kicked out of home at 16 and spent three years either homeless, no fixed abode or in vulnerable housing. (You can read a bit more about this via @Haunt_Harrogate imovearts.co.uk/haunt-harrogat…)
Often when a homeless character enters a story they are there to die and illicit sympathy in the protagonist. Freezing to death on the coldest night of the year, found by the protag who has seen them in the neighbourhood but never learnt their name
Or if the homeless person is a protagonist their story is one highlighting the darker side of homelessness, preyed upon by predators, abused, or an innocent surrounded by other homeless people who aren't.
This will often show them as drug addicted, prone to violence, and experiencing violence, and locked in a cycle of failing. A timelessness they can't escape. While I think these portrayals often come from a place of good intent, it only lets one story be told.
Homelessness doesn't always look like homelessness. While street homelessness is the main type shown, people can experience homelessness while sofa surfing or stopping with friends. It's the chaotic nature and vulnerability that contributes to the homelessness.
In stories people experiencing homelessness are often severed from time. They are outside history, including their own. If any history is mentioned it is as contrast to deepen the shadows of their situation.
Yet we've spoken to people who worked in the theatre, had loving families, have travelled the world and these were all stories they were willing to tell. Often they're also portrayed as not having a future too. Again putting them outside time. It's a perpetual situation.
Yes, it is hard to break out of homelessness, but most people have ambitions (wanting to be an archaeologist gave me a goal through my teens), and this can help disrupt the default if it's portrayed in fiction.
In fiction people experiencing homelessness are also often portrayed as having no present beyond not having a home. Yet there are people who hold jobs. During Haunt we met builders, translators, and I attended school and college while I was no fixed abode.
In fiction they are also severed from the community whereas, in England at least, many people are homeless in the towns where they grew up, so they will encounter people they know. People might help them, there might be people they avoid, but they are embedded within that society
When people offer to buy food for people begging they often do it without asking the person, and then get annoyed when they aren't appreciative. They should not have to just be grateful for your generosity. That's about you, not them. Speak to them first.
In the same way you should speak to your homeless characters. They may not have a home, but they have tastes, likes and dislikes. They might hate tomatoes or be vegetarian, or not like pastry. We found that people in the shelters didn't want cake because everyone got them cake.
They have still grown up in the culture & will have tastes in music, film. Political views, They might like rockabilly, or hate jazz, or love funk. They might love architecture, or spend time in free galleries, or follow a football team. They are still people.
Probably the big one for me is to not just write homeless characters as misery porn, or as foils to experience abuse. Yes, it is dark, particularly when you're young, but there are moments of laughter, and stupidity, and absurdity.
While that time in my life left me with a huge amount of experiences that weren't great, looking back 26 years the things I remember are the stupid stuff like getting kicked out of a bedsit and moving all my stuff on an armchair through the local park.
Or the cousins who lived next door to me in one bedsit finishing the last of my milk and feeling guilty so stealing me two 24 pint catering packs of milk to apologise. (What was I going to do with 48 pints of milk before it went off?) (harrogatehaunt.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/che…)
One person who I think writes homelessness well is @cdelint . Jilly Coppercorn is a major recurring character in the Newford books who was homeless and has a past and future. I found something in those books I recognised. Someone who had got out of their situation.
In the US 1 in 20 children under 6 have experienced homelessness in 2015 (that statistic almost makes me feel physically sick) A lot of people growing up with homelessness in their story. I think it's important as writers we make sure that breadth of experience is represented.
(Ref. for that last statistic acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/… )
This is not to berate anyone, but in the same way there are other defaults in fiction we can improve our writing by approaching differently, I feel the same about homelessness.
This is not to berate anyone, but in the same way there are other defaults in fiction we can improve our writing by approaching differently, I feel the same about homelessness.
For me this is what homelessness looked like. This is my school photo about six months after I got kicked out of home. The second one is a few months later again on a college geography field trip, probably after I got kicked out of my bedsit with three days notice. 
A quick note about drugs. There’s no denying that drugs are a feature of homelessness (as they are of the rest of the community) but I think it’s important to understand why people take them rather than writing one dimensional junkies.
I asked a friend of mine (who had been kicked out of home too) what heroin was like. He told me it gave him a warm feeling of contentment like he had a nice home and a loving family.
In this documentary about Spice (which is devastating) people talk about how it compresses time. How it makes a day seem like an hour.
People, at least in the start, are taking these drugs because it gives them something that they don’t have. The damage is a side effect.
But this was something I and many others avoided, partly through choice & partly because people shielded is from it. I got through that time because of people helping. Not authorities but friend’s mothers who invited me for Sunday dinner or bought me clothes when I had £22 a week
