That's why Growing The Beard itself is YMMV. You might think the work in question jumped the shark, but many others believe otherwise. Also, I'm afraid your edit on the page was natter, so I reverted it (I also reverted the piece of natter you were responding to).
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IMO the example of LOTR doesn't really fit this trope and should probably be removed:
'A moment like this for The Lord of the Rings appears in The History Of The Lord of The Rings. We see several early drafts of the beginning of the book that would become The Fellowship of The Ring. They are all very similar, in construction and tone, to The Hobbit. The original villain of the piece was always intended to be the Necromancer mentioned in The Hobbit. However Tolkien's original interpretation made him a fairly light-hearted, almost mischievous villain. However, somewhere along the line (in a moment which, sadly, Christopher Tolkien could find no record of) Tolkien changed it so that the Lord of The Rings was actually Sauron, the villain from his Numenor legend. Tolkien then saw that the legend of the rings could be used as a way to explain how Sauron survived the destruction of Numenor. With the Smaug-like villain replaced by a character who was, for all intents and purposes, Satan, the book became more grounded and the story got much, much darker; growing into the legendary saga we have today. This dragged many other characters along with it - Aragorn, the wandering king-in-exile, was originally Trotter, a rather silly but experienced hobbit who dressed himself as a man and stood on stilts.
Note that the Necromancer was explained to have been an alias of Sauron.'
Sorcerer in training
"Or the Lord Vetinari in The Colour of Magic (Word Of God had to step in and confirm that it was the same Patrician, and not one of his thoroughly insane predecessors) to the Magnificent Bastard of the Moist Von Lipwig books."
Then the History Monks have been at work again, since Night Watch makes it fairly clear that it was Vetinari's predecessor in The Colour of Magic. But that's Discworld for you.
Edited by Candi Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett Hide / Show Replies
No, it doesn't. Night Watch still takes place years and years before The Color Of Magic.
This may be more YMMV, but this troper has to disagree with the evaluation of the first book of the Wheel of Time, the Eye of the World. Whether it borrows from fantasy conventions or not, it's the only book (at least the only one of the first 10) where the plot moves along at a good pace for the entire novel. It's interesting throughout. The second book in the series, The Great Hunt introduced a plot structure that Jordan would use in every subsequent novel he wrote: Major important events/revelations in the first 50 pages, then 500 pages of filler during which plot points and characters advance slowly or not at all, then a major, often world-changing climax that has you wanting to start the next book immediately.
From a story structure standpoint, that sounds more like Jumping The Shark than Growing the Beard to me.
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