A Bowtie and No Eyebrows...

[jjpor]

This amused me greatly - a) because it's so true about the Target novelisations written by Uncle Terry (and I think I've unconsciously used more than one of the stock phrases mentioned in my own fic, so many of these did I read back in my schooldays), and b) because the idea generally tickles me:

www.sfx.co.uk/2010/06/07/doctor-who-compo-describe-the-doctor-terrance-dicks-style/

I neither understand nor care for Twitter, do I dunno if I'll have a go properly, but I thought we could just post some Eleven descriptions here, for the fun of it.

I think I'd go with something like:

"An awkwardly-posed figure with the face of a student and the clothes of a professor."

Although that might not be direct enough for the classic Dicks style...

[clocketpatch]

Haha, yes, I saw that and as a result spent my very boring day at work thinking of how to describe the Mattster (and making random little doodles of his face all over post-it notes).

Best I could come up with:

A young-looking man playing dress-up in a professor's jacket and bowtie, sweeping hair and a massive brow over-shadowed his old blue eyes.

Er... that's not particularly direct either, and it over runs by 16 characters...

An awkward young man in a tweed jacket and bowtie.


...

I do not envy Terrance dicks the job of sorting through these.

[jjpor]

See, your second one there sounds exactly like the sort of thing they'd use - very simple and to the point. Now, write about fifty short novels about Eleven and use that same description in every single one of them! ;D

[clocketpatch]

Hmmm... I suppose this means I should make a Twitter account and enter then. Except, Twitter kind of scares me. I mean, the last time I had an account I never used it, not once, and it wasn't connected to my regular email address, and I didn't tell anyone about it, and it had no personal information attached... yet I somehow ended up with several followers from the city I live in and the school I go to and it was just beyond creepy.

[jjpor]

No, no, that sort of thing is why I steer clear of social networking sites. I value my internet anonymity, such as it is (although I'm sure people could quite easily find out who I am if they really wanted to).

Er...not that I have any sinister motives for wanting to remain incognito, you understand... ;D

[merrythemad]

I entered, I got twitter ages ago and never use it, I hate it, it's self-absorbed and obnoxious but here is my entry, it's a bit wordy but not over their character limit.

an awkward angular man with arms and legs all akimbo; impossibly sporting a bow tie and braces over battered combatboots

[primsong]

Not a Twitter-er here either. Same reason I don't even like being on facebook - only there under protest to keep up with my kid, and that under a pseudonym. :-P Not that it has anything to do with secretly working as a minion for JJ... nope, nothing. *whistles innocently*

How about
"Gilligan if he were a bow-tied Professor"
That's only 40 with spaces, so we've even room to elaborate, though it does assume a familiarity with who Gilligan is. Perhaps we should add some modifiers like "caffeinated" or "angular".

[clocketpatch]

I made a new account for the sole purpose of the contest (it will be deleted soon after, yes it will) and gave them the concise and rather bland:

"an awkward young man with a ragged mass of black hair and a bow tie"

[jjpor]

Yeah, I yielded to the lure of the twitter just to share mine with the world (as if the world is interested); I went with something similar to my first thought:

"an awkward, gangling figure with the face of a student and the clothes of a professor".

Of course, not all students are young and I'd imagine that nowadays next to no professors wear tweed or bowties, but I'm trading in stereotypes here. ;D