Use Clean Sequence 233466 to add more depth to an explanation of a non-controversial communication objective
Here's a 300-word article followed by a 760-word example that you can skim through...then I show you how it all emerged from Clean Sequence 233466.
A well-established scaffold for non-fiction writing is State-Explain-Illustrate-Apply, sometimes shortened to SEIA. If it’s new to you, it might strike you as common sense and maybe common practice. However there are some subtleties that take time and effort to master.
SEIA is the basis for my Clean Sequence 233466 which looks like this:
State: And what is the idea you would like to communicate?
Explain: And is there anything else about that? (repeat as necessary)
Illustrate: And when that’s how it is, what could illustrate that?
Apply: And when that’s how it is, then what could happen? And what difference… does knowing that… make?
In my experience, some people say, “oh yes, that’s very natural for me, it’s what I do.” And actually they don’t.
Challenges
The biggest challenges are:
Covering the whole of SEIA and not missing something out (most likely ‘Apply’ and possibly ‘State’);
Keeping SEIA in good shape and not vastly inflating ‘Illustrate’ at the expense of the other elements; and
Making the ‘Apply’ element really useful to the audience.
To help with the third of these challenges, it can be useful to write the elements in a different order to how they are presented to the audience. ‘Apply’ is probably the hardest element to tackle so I sometimes write this before ‘Illustrate’.
View
Just to be clear: I don’t use SEIA as a scaffold all the time or even as a default. But I do think it can be helpful and it provides boundaries that can be stimulating to a writer. For what it’s worth, I’ve enjoyed writing this article with it.
I like to think of the SEIA-inspired Clean Sequence 233446 as a tool in my toolbox – and it’d be great if it could be the same for you if you’re also a creator of content.
Example
To consolidate all this, let’s work through how a short section of a randomly chosen non-fiction book (‘Mental Wealth’ by Mike Pagan) might be rewritten to fit the SEIA scaffold. Here’s an edited version of the original section, which is entitled ‘Pay it Forward’:
There are many ways to have a positive impact on the world. ‘Pay it forward’ means choosing to do something good for someone else without expectation of reward or response. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Many years ago, as a poor student, I met with an old school friend who was running a wine bar. I’d spent all my money and…. [Story about a friend who pays for drinks saying “it’s on me, you’ll do the same for someone else in the future”].
The concept was first introduced to me in the movie ‘Pay It Forward’ [Recount the story of the movie, which shows that if one person does a good deed for three others and asks them to ‘pay it forward’, then three good deeds become nine, 27, 81 and soon thousands].
I hope this simple message sticks with you and you are able to introduce it into your live, and positively affect many other people’s lives.
We’ll start by just noticing the elements of SEIA:
There are many ways to have a positive impact on the world. ‘Pay it forward’ (= STATE) means choosing to do something good for someone else without expectation of reward or response (= EXPLAIN). You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Many years ago, as a poor student, I met with an old school friend who was running a wine bar. I’d spent all my money and…. [Story about a friend who pays for drinks saying “it’s on me, you’ll do the same for someone else in the future”]. (= ILLUSTRATE)
The concept was first introduced to me in the movie ‘Pay It Forward’ [Recount the story of the movie, which shows that if one person does a good deed for three others and asks them to ‘pay it forward’, then three good deeds become nine, 27, 81 and soon thousands] (= EXPLAIN)
I hope this simple message sticks with you and you are able to introduce it into your life (=APPLY?], and positively affect many other people’s lives.
Hmm. The current pattern seems to be SEIEA not SEIA. I’m going to edit the blocks of text in bold and then fit them into the SEIA pattern:
‘Pay it forward’… (= STATE) … means choosing to do something good for someone else without expectation of reward or response. If one person does a good deed for three others and asks them to ‘pay it forward’, then three good deeds become nine, 27, 81 and soon thousands. (= EXPLAIN)
[Story about a friend who pays for drinks saying “it’s on me, you’ll do the same for someone else in the future”.] (= ILLUSTRATE)
I hope this simple message sticks with you and you are able to introduce it into your life. (= APPLY)
What strikes you about that? It seems to me that the State, Explain and particularly Apply elements could be further developed. The Illustrate element is already quite long and could be reduced. Perhaps we could try something like this:
Pay it forward
A simple thing we can do to have a positive impact on the world is to adopt a ‘pay it forward’ attitude (=STATE).
This means choosing to do something good for someone else without expectation of reward or response. Imagine if one person were to do a good deed for three others and ask them to ‘pay it forward’; then three good deeds become nine, 27, 81 and soon thousands. That makes a difference! (=EXPLAIN)
I’ve been the grateful recipient of someone doing a good deed for me – I still remember that, when I was a poor student, I ran out of money early in an evening but a friend paid for my drinks saying “it’s on me, you’ll do the same for someone else in the future”. And I have done, and will do it again. (= ILLUSTRATE)
So here’s a challenge: could we do three good deeds, this week, and ask the recipients to ‘pay it forward’? (= APPLY)
This latest version follows the SEIA pattern. When you compare it with the original, what do you notice?
Next step
If you want to test the SEIA scaffold for yourself, try Clean Sequence 233466. It’s particularly suitable where your aim is to explain something non-controversial and to encourage some action.
Good luck.
<ends>
Now I’ll share how the content for that article emerged from a Clean Sequence (code = 964945). The questions posed by the Clean Sequence are in italics:
Thinking of your context…
I’m wanting to write a section with a draft subheading of: “Use Clean Sequence 233466 to add more depth to an explanation of a non-controversial communication objective.”
And what is the idea you would like to communicate?
A well-established scaffold for non-fiction writing is State-Explain-Illustrate-Apply, sometimes shortened to SEIA. If it’s new to you, it might strike you as common sense and maybe common practice. However there are some subtleties that take time and effort to master.
And is there anything else about that? X3
SEIA is the basis for my Clean Sequence 233466 which looks like this:
State: And what is the idea you would like to communicate?
Explain: And is there anything else about that? (repeat as necessary)
Illustrate: And when that’s how it is, what could illustrate that?
Apply: And when that’s how it is, then what could happen? and what difference… does knowing that… make?
And is there anything else about that?
In my experience, some people say, “oh yes, that’s very natural for me, it’s what I do, ”. And actually they don’t. The biggest challenges are:
Covering the whole of SEIA and not missing something out (most likely ‘Apply’ and possibly ‘State’);
Keeping SEIA in good shape and not vastly inflating ‘Illustrate’ at the expense of the other elements; and
Making the ‘Apply’ element really useful to the audience.
And is there anything else about that?
To help with the third of these challenges, it can be useful to write the elements in a different order to how they are presented to the audience. When I wrote this article with SEIA, for example, I began with ‘State’ and the first part of ‘Explain’. Then I wrote ‘Apply’. Then I finished ‘Explain’ and concluded with ‘Illustrate’. I find this useful because ‘Apply’ is probably the hardest element to tackle. There may be some overlap between ‘Apply’ and ‘Illustrate’ in which case I give preference to the former.
And is there anything else about that?
Just to be clear: I’m not saying that SEIA is a perfect scaffold for writing. I don’t use it all the time. But I do think it can be helpful and it provides boundaries that can be stimulating to a writer. For what it’s worth, I’ve enjoyed writing this article with the SEIA-inspired Clean Sequence 233446.
And when that’s how it is, what could illustrate that?
I like to think of it as a tool in my toolbox – and it’d be great if it could be the same for you if you’re also a creator of content.
And when that’s how it is, then what could happen?
To consolidate all this, let’s work together in applying SEIA to a randomly chosen section of a non-fiction book (‘Mental Wealth’ by Mike Pagan) that happens to be on my book shelves. Here’s a heavily-edited version of the original section, which is entitled ‘Pay it Forward’:
There are many ways to have a positive impact on the world. ‘Pay it forward’ means choosing to do something good for someone else without expectation of reward or response. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Many years ago, as a poor student, I met with an old school friend who was running a wine bar. I’d spent all my money and…. [Story about a friend who pays for drinks saying “it’s on me, you’ll do the same for someone else in the future”].
The concept was first introduced to me in the movie ‘Pay It Forward’ [Recount the story of the movie, which shows that if one person does a good deed for three others and asks them to ‘pay it forward’, then three good deeds become nine, 27, 81 and soon thousands].
I hope this simple message sticks with you and you are able to introduce it into your live, and positively affect many other people’s lives.
We’ll start by just noticing the elements of SEIA:
There are many ways to have a positive impact on the world. ‘Pay it forward’ (= STATE) means choosing to do something good for someone else without expectation of reward or response (= EXPLAIN). You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Many years ago, as a poor student, I met with an old school friend who was running a wine bar. I’d spent all my money and…. [Story about a friend who pays for drinks saying “it’s on me, you’ll do the same for someone else in the future”]. (= ILLUSTRATE)
The concept was first introduced to me in the movie ‘Pay It Forward’ [Recount the story of the movie, which shows that if one person does a good deed for three others and asks them to ‘pay it forward’, then three good deeds become nine, 27, 81 and soon thousands] (= EXPLAIN)
I hope this simple message sticks with you and you are able to introduce it into your life (=APPLY?], and positively affect many other people’s lives.
Hmm. The current pattern seems to be SEIEA not SEIA. I’m going to edit the blocks of text in bold and then fit them into the SEIA pattern:
‘Pay it forward’… (= STATE) … means choosing to do something good for someone else without expectation of reward or response. If one person does a good deed for three others and asks them to ‘pay it forward’, then three good deeds become nine, 27, 81 and soon thousands. (= EXPLAIN)
[Story about a friend who pays for drinks saying “it’s on me, you’ll do the same for someone else in the future”.] (= ILLUSTRATE)
I hope this simple message sticks with you and you are able to introduce it into your life. (= APPLY)
What strikes you about that? It seems to me that the State, Explain and particularly Apply elements could be further developed. The Illustrate element is already quite long and could be reduced. Perhaps we could try something like this:
Pay it forward
A simple thing we can do to have a positive impact on the world is to adopt a ‘pay it forward’ attitude (=STATE).
This means choosing to do something good for someone else without expectation of reward or response. Imagine if one person were to do a good deed for three others and ask them to ‘pay it forward’; then three good deeds become nine, 27, 81 and soon thousands. That makes a difference! (=EXPLAIN)
I’ve been the grateful recipient of someone doing a good deed for me – I still remember that, when I was a poor student, I ran out of money early in an evening but a friend paid for my drinks saying “it’s on me, you’ll do the same for someone else in the future”. And I have done, and will do it again. (= ILLUSTRATE)
So here’s a challenge: could we do three good deeds, this week, and ask the recipients to ‘pay it forward’? (= APPLY)
This latest version follows the SEIA pattern. When you compare it with the original, what do you notice?
And what difference… does knowing that… make?
If you want to test the SEIA scaffold for yourself, try Clean Sequence 233466 when you are next writing a section of non-fiction content where your aim is to explain something and encourage some action. Good luck.