How stories can work better than textbooks for Sex Ed

To coincide with the release of her latest book, Not Going To Plan, author Tia Fisher explains why she thinks stories can be a powerful tool to engage with young people on topics surrounding sex and relationships.

“We’re all stories in the end …” said the Eleventh Doctor. “Just make it a good, one, eh?”

Admittedly, it’s a bit of a leap from sci-fi to sex-ed, but if you work with young people and want to promote learning and encourage discussion, you could do worse than tell them a good story.

To find out why, let’s start with the science.

It’s no secret that teenage brains are wired differently. One reason why teenagers find it hard to put the brakes on their impulses is because in adolescence the prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational decisions and managing feelings, is still very much under development. By contrast, the amygdala – the ‘dinosaur brain’ which helps us to fight or flee – is on full throttle.

But the amygdala is also involved in the pain-pleasure systems which play a big part in emotional processing, memory and learning. Where were you when you heard about the death of a grandparent or you got engaged? Chances are, you remember. When a sensation or emotion is connected to an event, we store the memory for future use. So, for example, if we’re injured, we get information about how we were hurt so that we can avoid doing it again. Experiments using fear conditioning prove that this kind of learning occurs rapidly, and the memory can last a lifetime.

Reading or listening to a story is an astonishingly complex activity: the brain actually lights up as if what we’re reading about were actually happening. We actually experience physical sensations and even motor activity: ever felt your heart racing at the scary bit? When we vicariously share the characters’ experiences, this enhances emotional understanding, empathy, and learning. We feel. We learn.

I write stories to get teens engaged and talking about ‘difficult’ topical subjects.

I write in narrative verse, and the short-form immersive format creates a page-turning experience as accessible to reluctant readers as a graphic novel.

With my new YA verse novel, Not Going to Plan, I want to reach the thousands of under-18s who go through abortions each year, but whose experience is rarely reflected in young fiction. I hope I’ve created an engaging, empathic roadmap with practical advice on avoiding pregnancy and accessing abortion, and given girls reassurance that they are not unusual, and they shouldn’t feel ashamed. I consulted with Brook to make sure my story was credible, accurate, and authentic.

Not Going to Plan covers other issues too. Misogyny can be a casual everyday poison; sex and life are messy. Instead of insulting teenagers’ intelligence with black-and-white case studies, I put them inside the heads of imperfect characters with complex wants and needs they can identify with; grey situations which help open up discussion of condom use and consent.

I invented sixteen-year-old insecure, impulsive Marnie, just expelled from a single-sex boarding school and eager for thrills and attention. Marnie is flawed but likeable; bright and resourceful, the accidental child of a single mum. At Marnie’s first-ever party with classmates from her new school, she drinks so much that when the boy she’s been lusting after comes on strong, she’s all too happy to go upstairs with him.

Marnie agrees to protected sex and hands the boy a condom. He tells her he’s ‘got it covered’ and turns out the light. But after they’ve started, she changes her mind and tells him. He’s angry, but he does stop. So this isn’t a story about rape . . . or is it?

It is. Next morning Marnie finds the unused condom and realises she’s been ‘stealthed’. Later she learns that if you agreed to sex with a condom, then having unprotected sex without consent is rape. In the meantime, she sensibly takes a morning-after pill – but doesn’t realise that because she’s already ovulated, it won’t work. Consulting Doctor Google only sends her up more blind alleys, until finally – and just before her GCSE exams – Marnie finds out she’s pregnant. After some soul-searching, she decides she wants an abortion, but not all her friends support her. Worst of all, she can’t tell her mum – what if Mum wants her to do as she did, and keep it?

That’s just the set-up: throughout the story there are ample opportunities for discussion of other topics such as STIs, homophobic bullying, coercion, gender identity, and sexualisation. With such limited timetable resources available for RSHE, I can’t think of a better way to deliver cross-curricular reinforcement of RSHE teaching than through story.

Last year, Crossing the Line, Tia Fisher’s debut verse novel about county lines, won the prestigious Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Medal, voted for by over 30,000 young readers. It also won the UK Literacy Association Award, described by the judges as a ‘life-saving book’ and is in the 2024 ‘Read for Empathy’ Collection.

Not Going to Plan by Tia Fisher is out in paperback on 28th August published by Hot Key Books.