The writing blog of David Stringer
Tropes are, in a basic sense, the building blocks of stories. These can be character archetypes (Rogue Cop, Magical Negro); plot devices (The Catch-22 Dilemma, Ticking Bomb); types of joke (Inside Joke, Call-Back). More or less anything that goes into a story.
Continue reading “Tuesday Tropes 1: The Fourth Wall Greeting”
Today at Bornoffside.net, the latest Lower League Week is up.
Carlisle’s results this weeks have been less bad than previously; Bradford’s Nahki Wells has broken a club scoring record; There’s been lots of goals for Coventry and Peterborough but few for Hartlepool; Wycombe have had a double financial boost; Mark Cooper has started well at Swindon but still has a few problems ahead.
Plus, there’s been a few upsets in the second round of the League Cup.
Click here to read The Lower League Week – Posh Peterborough Slaughter the Royals
This first appeared on SportsLobster three days ago.
Like many people, I find Adrian Durham extremely annoying. He has all the insight of a pub bore, and the smugness of a man of genius who the world refuses to recognise. Somehow, his infuriating nature has drawn in listeners and readers, and he’s ended up presenting a show on TalkSport and writing a weekly column for the Daily Mail.
Continue reading “The Strange World of Adrian Durham: Better than Wenger”
At Bornoffside.net, the Lower League Week has gone up today.
There’s some bits on the Football League and governance in general (it’s more interesting than it sounds); a large section on Coventry; Carlisle and Greg Abbott; Swindon’s new boss Mark Cooper; Oldham’s kitman doing a runner; and Bobby Moore, Leyton Orient legend.
Click here to read The Lower League Week: Michael Knighton’s Bloody Awful Poetry
The Premier League has finally got around to starting their games, the lazy buggers, kicking off for the first time yesterday. To tie in with this, there was a new piece on BornOffside yesterday morning, we took a look at what we think for the season ahead.
Eight of us gave our thoughts on who’ll win the league, qualify for the Champions’ League, be relegated, and surprise expectations. A few times we contradict each other, which is proof that we shall be proven right on all things.
Click here to read the BornOffside Premier League Preview
Today my latest Lower League Week went up at BornOffside.
It featured stories on Wolves trying to clear out unwanted players so that they can take a star player from Sheffield United, one of their rivals; Exeter have decided to expand their fanbase by appealing to Brazilians; Walsall have started surprisingly well and Carlisle surprisingly badly; there’s some brief thoughts on Hartlepool; and two different versions of Coventry City were playing at ‘home’ at the same time on Sunday.
Basically, it’s just another ordinary, bizarrely colourful week in the lower leagues!
Click here to read Lower League Week: Wolves at Sheffield United’s Door
This went up a little later than it should have, but yesterday BornOffside published predictions made for the Football League and Conference by myself and two others – Lucy Waldon and Dan Rawley.
Obviously, predictions should be made before the event begins, as the word, broken down, should make clear: pre- meaning previous to, and -diction meaning… to pronounce correctly. Actually, that just about makes sense.
Though it’s been published after two Football League games and one Conference game, all predictions were made before the Football League started.
Click here to read Football League & Conference Predictions
This weekend sees the release of Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium in the US and UK, in which 23rd century Matt Damon declares war on a space station to force them to cure his cancer. I’m starting to suspect the twist may be that he’s a mental patient and it’s all in his head.
Although it’s only Neill Blomkamp’s second feature film (after the excellent District 9) he made a number of short films, all of which are available on Youtube, all of which I watched, and reviewed to give an idea of his career so far.
Click here to read Marathon Man: Neill Blomkamp
The Football League has returned, and that means that, during the week, so did the Lower League Week.
On Wednesday, for Born Offside, I wrote about the Coventry fiasco; the media’s lazy reporting of the Coventry fiasco; a Crawley fan being banned for being mean to Ian Holloway; Northampton beginning pre-season with a bonfire; the opening weekend’s matches; and an Accrington employee being naughty and breaking some betting laws.
There was also some lovely sarcasm from Torquay United, and Notts County tempting fate.
You can read all that and more at The Lower League Week: Coventry’s Ten Points and Northampton’s Bonfire of the Memories
The Football League is set to start again today, so it’s about time for me to get round to linking to a couple of articles I wrote during the week for Bornoffside.net, summing up the events concerning the teams of League One and Two.
Wolves have been named as the favourites for League One after being relegated for two years in a row, but haven’t done all that much in the transfer market; Coventry have been in deep financial trouble, and have made the deeply unpopular decision to move the team 30 miles from home, with only 300 fans following them (seriously). Swindon and Walsall have stripped their team away, while Exeter have arranged to follow the example of Arsenal, Manchester United and others by jetting off around the world for a pre-season tour next summer. But in there case, there is a justification beyond ‘we like money’.
Click here to read Lower League Summer: League One
Click here to read Lower League Summer: League Two
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