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Blind Date Exercise

Instructions:

The following paragraph is much too long for what little information it offers. You must revise it and improve it. This is an exercise in informative writing and in following written instructions. Do not ask any questions. Just revise the paragraph according to these directions. You must finish in 20 minutes.

1. Cut any repeated or useless opinions.
2. Invent facts and details to replace the vague opinions and descriptions. Give vivid pictures for the reader to see. That is, show the reader what happened; don’t merely give the reader your unsupported judgments about what happened. Don’t keep secrets; don’t make the reader guess. Instead, SHOW the facts and trust the reader to interpret them.

Blind Date

My blind date turned out to be a big disappointment. His name was Greg. To start off with, he showed up quite late and his appearance was sloppy. I have never before seen any date as unpresentable as Greg. He looked like he just didn’t care enough to groom himself or to dress appropriately. We got in his very old and very run down car, which he obviously had not even bothered to clean, and headed for dinner. Dinner was not the most pleasant experience in the world of dining. The restaurant was a run down dump. Our meal was completely unsatisfactory in every way you could imagine. And to top it all off, Greg’s table manners were absolutely disgusting. After that miserable dinner, we decided to go to Greg’s favorite club to dance. You can guess what that was like: simply awful. As soon as we got inside of the club, we started to dance, if you can call what Greg did dancing. I would call it anything else. I was embarrassed to be seen on the dance floor with him, so I was relieved when Greg wanted to stop. I expected to go right home, but much to my surprise, Greg drove to a place where we could park. Against my will Greg persisted in many ungentlemanly advances. I resisted him with ever-increasing urgency. Finally he got my message and took me home. In conclusion, I resolved to make a solemn promise to myself that Greg would be the very last blind date that I ever went on in my entire life.

Here the vague opinions and descriptions are marked in red.

My blind date turned out to be a big disappointment. His name was Greg. To start off with, he showed up quite late and his appearance was sloppy. I have never before seen any date as unpresentable as Greg. He looked like he just didn’t care enough to groom himself or to dress appropriately. We got in his very old and very run down car, which he obviously had not even bothered to clean, and headed for dinner. Dinner was not the most pleasant experience in the world of dining. The restaurant was a run down dump. Our meal was completely unsatisfactory in every way you could imagine. And to top it all off, Greg’s table manners were absolutely disgusting. After that miserable dinner, we decided to go to Greg’s favorite club to dance. You can guess what that was like: simply awful. As soon as we got inside of the club, we started to dance, if you can call what Greg did dancing. I would call it anything else. I was embarrassed to be seen on the dance floor with him, so I was relieved when Greg wanted to stop. I expected to go right home, but much to my surprise, Greg drove to a place where we could park. Against my will Greg persisted in many ungentlemanly advances. I resisted him with ever-increasing urgency. Finally he got my message and took me home. In conclusion, I resolved to make a solemn promise to myself that Greg would be the very last blind date that I ever went on in my entire life.

Blind Date Revised

My blind date was a big disappointment. Greg showed up an hour late wearing a leather vest over his hairy chest and sporting four earrings: two in the lobe of his right ear, one on the top of his right ear, and one in his right eyebrow. If he was wearing a fifth earring, it was most likely somewhere inside his shorts. The passenger door on his Geo was caved in and wired shut with a coat hanger. When Greg opened his door, a beer can dropped down onto the driveway. Then I waited while he moved a car battery from the passenger seat onto his wooden “I WILL WORK FOR FOOD” sign on the back seat. For dinner, Greg splurged on two burgers and fries at the drive thru window at MacDonald’s and offered me sips from the last can of Old Milwaukee he had opened from the cooler at my feet. We went to a club in a warehouse that had no tables or chairs. Greg’s one dance move looked like he was pretending to bathe himself in the shower, so I asked him to take me home. Instead he took me to park under an I-95 overpass where some of his friends lived. His hands started squeezing me as if on the 6 a.m. milking on a dairy farm. After I bloodied his nose with a flashlight, he took me home. This was my last blind date.

What is the point? Get the details right and they will speak for themselves.

Last updated 9/18/06