Night Shift
Night Shift
By Stephen King
While hard at work on perfecting some newer short fiction, I decided it would be a good idea to dissect a collection of short fiction to examine how each piece works from a craft point of view. From there, I would take the mechanics and try to see how they could be applied to my own short fiction in the next round of edits—hopefully, to give me a greater perspective of how I can take my writing to the next level.
The subject of autopsy this time is Night Shift by Stephen King, which is the first short fiction collection he’s ever developed. I specifically chose his collection for two reasons: 1. Because King, like myself, struggles at times with brevity and 2. Because this is a collection published earlier in King’s writing career, on the tail-end of his first breakout novel (The Shining) so if there were going to be trip-ups to learn from, they’d probably be most prevalent here.
I admit to reading a lot of King. Part of that is because I’ve always just dug his style. His works not only entertain me but also speak to me on a variety of levels. But the other part is that he takes a lot of risks, which means from a craft point of view there’s a lot I can learn from him. I can see what works and doesn’t work from him and use it as food for thought as I tackle my own writing. And a lot of his work is in the genre I love—horror.
There are many other brilliant horror writers out there. And I love reading them just as much. We’ll be taking a look at their work too. But for now, let’s see how these stories work.
Published in 1978, Night Shift features a number of stories originally published in various magazines throughout the early 1970’s. And overall, it’s a well-put together collection because it carries the common thread of night-time and darkness to unify everything nicely. But, at the same time, for as much promise as it carries, the collection presents some serious faults throughout.
Let’s go through, story by story.
1. “Jerusalem’s Lot”
This story I think was one of the strongest of the collection. While it was clearly an early version of what would become the novel Salem’s Lot, I think King took a bold approach by writing this one as an epistolary tale. It captured the feel of Dracula while retelling it as an effective horror piece. The main issue I had with this is that parts of it dragged on until the characters reached the village. While I can appreciate the aesthetics King was going for, I think he got in his own way on a few occasions by trying to use phrasings accurate to the setting. While it was successful in capturing the feel of what is happening, it also bogged down the pacing of the text. I would have liked to see another round of editing done to this one with particular focus on the way the story is narrated in letter.
I especially enjoyed the ending—the way it provides a cyclical nature to the work. I’ve seen this kind of thing done before but not necessarily in a short story. It worked well with this kind of piece. I wonder if he used it in Salem’s Lot.
2. “Graveyard Shift”
This story was strong. I really enjoyed reading it because of the dark and gritty realism King captured when detailing how the workers worked like dogs. If I recall correctly, in On Writing, King talked about how he had to help his mother out throughout high school working overnights in a mill and trying to get his diploma during the day. He had a tough upbringing, and you can feel the fire in the writer when you read this piece.
But while it’s filled with dark and horrific tension and a beautiful tone throughout the story, I wanted just a little more interiority on Hall’s part. As the protagonist, we (as readers) have to truly understand the motivation behind how he does certain things (especially towards the climax). While I felt that the start was there, I just wanted one or two sentences more to truly see inside his head, feeling what he felt. That would have made this great story an amazing story.
Still, I give King an A+ for his thematic pattern. It wasn’t as tight as some of his other work but tight enough to make this story strong. And I felt like he made some truly wonderful characters in this tale with a truly rich setting that captured the overall feel he was going for.
I loved it.
3. “Night Surf”
I’d like to mark this one up as ambitious and beautiful in its own light. While I felt like it fell just slightly short of the dark story it could have been, I thought it was simply beautiful the way it was told and the way it unfolded. Almost reminiscent of a horrific “Hills Like White Elephants” (although, not quite as indirect) in the way that it unfolded because it almost felt in sections like the protagonist is relying heavily on the reader to just know (without being given a lot of information) what is happening. It has a lot of rich descriptions and a wonderfully bleak outlook from the close first-person narrative.
But for as beautiful as it is, it’s difficult for a reader to access the first time reading it. It has a difficult and rambling structure about it that seems to wander about—which is realistic but also leaves the reader in the dark. While the reference to Captain Trips gave me some context since he later used that as part of the basis of The Stand, I feel like if I hadn’t had that, it would have been a little more difficult. The reader needs to take their time with it and give it a second read because it not only deserves it, it needs to be coaxed to let the reader in.
Genre fiction often gets called plastic and written solely for entertainment value (holding no merit in art circles), and I give King a lot of credit for showing those people that they’re wrong. (Because, honestly, they are wrong. If you write something—anything—and work hard enough on it, it can be rich and deep enough to be art, plain and simple.) But this piece could have used just a little more context (especially in using the different names for diseases) to let the reader in.
I think, if he would have done that, his poetic writing throughout this tale would be amplified so much more. That this piece would have gotten its point across so much better the first time.
This was beautifully ambitious, King.
4. “I am the Doorway”
I really liked the premise of this one, although I had a little trouble at first believing the protagonist was an astronaut. But when thought of with the general plot, I was able to suspend my disbelief enough to get into the story. I really enjoyed how matter of fact the tone was, but I found it odd there wasn’t a clear-cut cause to the protagonist’s condition.
Almost like it was a mystery even to King.
Overall, I found the tale a little lagging, mainly because it spent so much time getting to the conflict that it detracted from the intensity of the climax. I think if King had pitted this one down a little more that this might have been a much stronger story. The ending would have been even that much more horrific because of it. But overall, I loved the twist that he put to it.
5. “The Mangler”
King gets an A+ for the way he sets the tone of this one. From the opening section, the reader is hooked, drawn in by the gritty details included that always draw the reader back to steam and heat and machinery. He includes the kind of careful selection of details that create a resonance which carries throughout the story.
This story might have been the strongest if it weren’t for the premise being too fantastical. While it certainly does the job of making a fun horror story about the almost ritualistic devotion to American industrialism, the cause for the antagonist’s presence struck me as being way too coincidental. The kind of what if that’s so outlandish that the reader knows there’s no way it could ever happen.
That being said, this story holds a special place in my heart. Not just for the way the story is told but also the ease of which he portrays excellent dialogue with his characters. There wasn’t a single moment that I didn’t disbelieve in any of the characters or their actions, even if I disbelieved in the presence of the antagonist. The overall effect for me (combined with the wonderful ending) was that I was reminded even the most outlandish premise could be a successful story if only the writer devotes enough time, energy, and belief into the work.
6. “The Boogeyman”
While this one was difficult to pull off because of the nature of the antagonist, I think King did the best he could. The dialogue in this one was terrific, and the overall way that the story was narrated came off natural and clean.
But it felt almost like he struggled with how to create terror out of a monster that is usually thought of only as being in the closet. I would have been interested in seeing how he could have taken the monster and made it his own—added that special King touch to it. While he struggled with that, however, I think the ending tied it together nice enough that it made the story okay.
7. “Gray Matter”
This one had a great premise to it as well as an amazing ending. I really enjoyed the way the story was told, overall. But there were a few tiny hiccups that I found weird, mainly the story about the bread. While it made sense when considered with the thematic patterning, I think the way it was phrased and related came off a little odd. I had to read that section twice to truly appreciate what information was being relayed.
That being said, I was a teensy bit disappointed in the cause of the “gray matter.” For a story that was so well-crafted with its thematic patterning (King did very well with that), I wanted the cause of it to be weirder. Maybe even to tie in with the pattern a little closer. While I understand that doing so can be a tiny bit difficult to do in a short story because you’re trying to pack in an intricately woven message within a short amount of writing without trying to sound “preachy,” I’ve seen it done before.
Still, it was a hell of a story with a hell of an ending.
8. “Battleground”
I truly enjoyed this one because it was just a really fun story to read. It had a lot of terrific action in it that kept the story moving at all times. But while it really moved with its pacing, there were a number of awkward phrasings that I had to reread—almost as if King were writing it so quickly that his brain was moving a lot faster than his fingers could translate the information. I admit this happens to me at times when I’m just on a roll—my brain is firing on all cylinders, going thousands of miles an hour only for my fingers to make poor mistakes (missing words, weird phrasings, etc.). In King’s case, I think these could have been buffed out with another round of edits.
The other issue I had is more of a very minor one—that is, why was lighter fluid kept in the bathroom? I understand that King needed something for the character to use, but no one in their right mind would keep that in a bathroom. There are plenty of other flammable household products (some of which are befitting of being in a bathroom) that could have been used which wouldn’t have detracted from the vivid world he was writing.
But while King tripped himself up with that, he more than made up for it with the ending. I thought the ending was deliciously dark and a truly unique choice. It tied everything together so nicely for this story.
9. “Trucks”
If King might have struggled in the past with getting to the story (rather than drawing out an unnecessary exposition), this story exemplifies that he knows how to get down to the soul of the work right from the start. The first-person point of view works incredibly well for telling this story, as it interweaves some truly spectacular thematic passages towards the ending.
Where I struggled with it was the cause for the trucks being the way they are. King did the best he could to portray it while maintaining the integrity of the first-person, but I needed one or two sentences more of theorizing the why behind the cause (this could have been even interiority).
One of the things I learned from Vermont College of Fine Arts is that the magic of the world you’re writing should be both known by the author and conveyed in such a way that the reader can accept it. What this means is that, if the magic just is, it has to be believed that the rules of the magic do not matter. If the rules of the magic matter, then the reader must understand them. While King basically makes it that the rules don’t matter, they matter enough that the characters are talking about the cause/why for the magic happening. To me, that makes it fall under the second rule.
Now, writing this magic in the realm of first-person when the cause is unknown to the narrator is tricky because the protagonist cannot know too much about the magic without betraying who they are as a character (and what their point of view may or may not know). This is why in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone we have both the letter from Hogwarts and the visit from Hagrid to explain why Harry is suddenly so special as well as how magic fits into the reality of the story and what the clearcut rules of the magic world are. Hagrid especially grounds this piece, and quite a few times writers use characters to ground the reader.
In “Trucks,” our protagonist doesn’t have that. There’s no one that can explain why the trucks are the way they are because they’re all in the same boat. In this sense, King writes himself into a corner because his characters can only speculate the why. He does this successfully, but it falls short because it’s one line. Written as if there’s not much thought behind it. To me, I needed just a tiny bit more of that.
Likewise, I needed a little more context behind why the characters give up as easily as they do. I get why King did this. He’s making a point while not dragging the story out. But to me, there was a simpler way the characters could have won that needed to be addressed—the possibility of slipping sugar into a gas tank.
Still, the end result was truly amazing. I really enjoyed this story, and I loved the raw human emotion included in this piece. The characters were truly real and just contributed to a beautiful overall darkness that carried on until the final lines. The ending brought it all together so nicely that it made the story powerful.
10. “Sometimes They Come Back”
The exposition of this one was terrific. I really thought it did a great job of laying out the tone and capturing the general feel of the piece with the job interview. I just might have combined the part where he tells his wife with it to keep the story going. Because, honestly, while I think this story was very good, it was just a bit too long.
Part of telling a story is ensuring the writer’s endurance matches the endurance of the reader. And sometimes, they don’t work. The writer may have a high endurance, riding high on the detailed story they have in their mind, while the reader may just want them to get to the point. Or, the writer may have a low endurance that has to keep the story small, while the reader is wondering, “is that it?”
This story is an example of a story where endurances almost matched—almost. While I feel like it was a very strong story with some truly amazing interiority written throughout it, it was just a bit too long for it was saying. I feel King could have cut about 1,000 to 1,500 words and had a tighter narrative that cut out some of the drag and kept the reader going.
But while there were parts that dragged, King made up for this by keeping a consistent, well-crafted tone throughout. This story is around 10,000 to 12,000 words, which can be difficult for a writer to sustain with tone. But King managed to keep it consistent. It was well-done.
11. “Strawberry Spring”
This one was great in that it had some beautifully written poetic descriptions. I feel like King truly captured the time period he was writing about (at least setting the weather) really well. This piece also had a lot of great characterization with some terrific interiority.
I felt that it needed some work, however, in the exposition and the thematic patterning. While this piece does have some truly beautiful sentences, the beginning is important because, if we think of a story almost like a space shuttle launch, the exposition would be ignition. You have to draw your reader in while simultaneously providing multiple pieces of information to ground the reader int the world of your story and the general setup. If you succeed in being interesting but fail to truly ground the reader in what you’re talking about at first (in this case, what exactly a strawberry spring is), your story suffers a malfunction as it races towards the skies, and sometimes, it explodes.
We don’t want that, now do we?
Didn’t think so. While King’s exposition is beautifully dark and alluring, I needed more information to truly connect with the setup. If he would have done that, as well as interweave just a tiny bit more clues about the ending, I think he would have had a powerhouse of a story. Something richly dark that adds a beautiful surprise to it.
That being said, I truly loved the ending. I felt like the twist was just the kind of thing a horror story like this needed. Even if I felt it wasn’t as deserved, it was exactly what I wanted out of this kind of story.
12. “The Ledge”
This one was featured in the movie Cats Eye; I admit to seeing that movie before reading this one. But while the premise was already apparent to me, I still really enjoyed this story. The pacing was good, and the ending was terrific. I loved the way he used first person point of view to get inside the protagonist’s head.
That being said, I think some of the character motivations needed another look. While I found the motivation to be solid for his choices, I think there needed to be more characterization of the relationship with Marcia because, at the core, that’s what the driving force was for both protagonist and antagonist.
Otherwise, it was terrific.
13. “The Lawnmower Man”
This story was the weakest out of the entire collection. While I wanted to like it (I really did), and I thought there was a great image with the cat going into the lawnmower (I’ve often had that exact fear growing up while cutting my parents’ lawn), this story had a very poor premise and a very weak thematic pattern. While King has proven multiple times that he can take even awkward and poorly thought-out premises and make them into great stories by writing the hell out of them in his great style, this one fell short.
It just didn’t speak to me.
14. “Quitters, Inc.”
I admit to having seen this one acted out by James Woods in the movie Cats Eye before reading it. But while the premise was given away for me, I think the protagonist was portrayed with excellent characterization. I had no issues with believing who he was or his motivation. The same goes for the overall premise. Quitters Inc. struck me as the kind of business that I had no problem believing in within the confines of the story.
That being said, King’s portrayal of his need for a cigarette I found a little more difficult to buy. That could be because it didn’t strike me as something personal for the writer. There wasn’t the edge of experience that is sometimes present when the writer has gone through something similar. I could be wrong; maybe King did smoke or quit smoking back then. But the desire for a cigarette didn’t strike me as needful enough; I wanted more.
Likewise, I wanted more from the characterization of his wife. While she was a secondary character, I felt her reaction during the climax was too plastic to be believable. Yes, this is a grotesque story where reality is distorted. But that doesn’t mean that her character wouldn’t still have some kind of pause to make it believable.
The last area of improvement I think King could have worked on with this tale is the overall handling of time. Unlike any method which might be used by writers trying to skillfully handle large amounts of time in few short words, King takes on a more cut and dry approach. Borderline bullet points. This was distracting and detracted from the power of the climax.
All of these weakened areas lead me to believe that, overall, there was a little too much authorial involvement in the story being told. Almost like he was trying to fit a novella into a short story and it just didn’t work. This could have been better if he took his time and allowed it to expand just a little more—perhaps into novelette length.
That being said, I still enjoyed it. The ending is so deliciously dark that it’s the kind of scene that sticks with you. Speaking to the idea that power can come with just one simple image.
15. “I Know What You Need”
This one had a fun premise to it. I really liked how it was written like a love story. I’m not sure if that was how King intended it (as it was very different from “The Man Who Loved Flowers”), but that’s how I read it until…well, I won’t give it away.
Where I felt this piece struggled was with, mainly, the choices made in where King focused the real-time (real-time, as defined by Joan Silber in The Art of Time in Fiction is defined as scenes that the writer is fully detailing rather than summarizing by some degree). There were several moments that I felt could have been condensed or cut altogether (Ed’s long backstory, the detailed scene to depict the death of a character by car, etc.) without jeopardizing the integrity of the piece.
Part of the trick to short fiction writing, I learned at VCFA, is that a writer must choose the most important moments to focus the work on since you’re attempting to essentially condense a large story into a short amount of space. That means sometimes killing the scenes you think are cool in the name of thematic patterning. Part of my Achilles heel in writing short fiction has always been choosing what scenes are most important because, when I dream up a story, it sometimes has too many fantastic images (at least, in my mind) that it’s hard for me to narrow down what has to be the most important to include (because, left to my own bouts of insanity, I’d love to include them all).
This story could have easily been restructured that the private detective part (which I just found a little weird for the world of the story) wasn’t needed and that the scenes would have been tighter in order to build up to a more thrilling climax.
This story had an awesome tone to it and good thematics, as well as a good ending to tie it all together. It just felt like it was too long for what it was. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed it.
16. “Children of the Corn”
While I had seen the movie version of Children of the Corn before, I still really enjoyed this piece. Primarily because the characterization of the married couple in it was so detailed and raw that it read as believable. I had no problems with believing the protagonist and his wife truly hated each other, even for what small measure of love they might show. Their dialogue, meanwhile, and reactions were truly on point.
But like “Quitters, Inc,” this story seemed to be trying to do a little too much. While it had a fantastic premise and a truly beautiful way it was structured, when it got to the intense action and the climax, I found it to be slightly just out of reach yet for where the story was. While there was plenty of information in the church book, there wasn’t enough information for me to truly make the leap as a reader between the question, “where are all the adults,” and the answer, “the children killed them for religious reasons.”
I wanted to be right there with King, but it felt like he struggled to convey the information through a third-party point of view. One or two more stepping stones were needed, in my opinion, to make it. That slightly ruined it for me as the action started because the tension wasn’t as intense as I was hoping it would be. And the ending where it takes on a dramatic shift to the children’s perspective to fully wrap up everything and explain it just didn’t work for me. It was awesome and created a beautiful ending, but it was an ending that didn’t feel deserved.
One of my professors back in undergrad used to call this a dirty trick back in workshop. What she meant was that a story—any story—needs the appropriate amount of information so the reader not only knows what’s going on but can almost guess where the ending is going to be taken. And I have no doubt that she would feel this story’s ending wasn’t as well deserved.
I loved this story, especially the detail, but it could have been better if it had been just a tiny bit longer—possibly novelette length.
17. “The Last Rung on the Ladder”
THIS was the best story out of the entire collection. It was wonderfully dark, and its ending was terrific. In all honesty, I read this story, and afterward, I sat back in my chair and said to myself, “Holy shit, that’s good.”
The main reason I feel this was the strongest story of the entire collection was because its thematic pattern was on point the entirety of the piece, from start to finish. The idea of safety and needing our loved ones (the idea that we have to prioritize them) was so tightly patterned with minute references and images that it created a powerful punch in a short span of pages.
The only sections I thought could have been improved were minor things that detracted from believability. The first was the height from the barn floor to the beam; as a kid who grew up on a farm, 50 to 60 feet is the average height from the peak of a barn. And I didn’t find it believable that Katrina’s profession would be a call girl. That didn’t really fit for me.
But THIS is the story every writer who struggles with theme should read so they can see how it works. Truly beautiful.
18. “The Man Who Loved Flowers”
I really enjoyed this one.
I thought it was excellent the way King set up a romantic feeling throughout the story only to remind the reader who he is (a horror writer). And he did it in a way that was not a dirty trick to the reader when he laid out his grand twist. That’s the mark of a truly gifted storyteller.
The story had plenty of context clues that the reader could distinguish where it was going to go and enjoy the ride getting there, even if they might have hoped it’d be something surprising (not a horror tale).
The only oddity I found (which is very small) is that King didn’t bother with giving any kind of context about the relationship with Norma. I was curious why this relationship was so important that things were…as they were (not to give it away). But I think if he had tried to add that layer of depth he would have sacrificed some of the beauty of the piece, so let’s call that a wash (not a criticism or a praise).
19. “One for the Road”
This one was good, but it seemed just a little too similar to “Jerusalem’s Lot” based on the fact that it deals with the same setting (almost) and vampires. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed it. But I’m not sure I would have chosen to do two stories so similar to each other in a collection like this, even if they carry a common element.
This is a story with a great tone, but I thought Lumley was a bit plastic (although, I understand that he had to be a vehicle given how it was told). I didn’t necessarily buy him as a character, and part of me felt the ending of this story didn’t have as great of a wrap up as I wanted.
That being said, this story is worth reading alone for the protagonist. I felt like King was trying something different and using a different kind of character to tell the story. And it worked. The narrator had some terrific interiority that mixed well with the tone. So, to me, it was a trade-off.
20. “The Woman in the Room”
For the last story in the collection (All of these stories are listed in chronological order as they appear in the book.), I felt like it was a great end story for a great collection. This one was beautifully dark and poetic in some places. The tone was good and fit the kind of story that King was telling.
What I found awkward, however, was the structure. He chose to tell this in a way that was jumbled and in the present tense. While this stylistic choice was bold and certainly ambitious, I’m just not convinced that it truly worked for this story. It was just a little too frantic and odd—not the kind of manner of telling it that I felt connected with the kind of story that was written.
Still, I felt tremendous sympathy for the protagonist, and the concept of horror in terms of being elderly/aging is something I connect to because I’ve seen it in jobs I’ve worked before and written about it. It’s a very real thing that is truly terrifying when you think about it. So I feel the premise was truly valid. And I think both its premise and the characters, as well as the good thematic pattern that was at work, compensated for its areas of weakness.
In conclusion, Night Shift delivers a series of stories that is both fun and ambitious, depicting the portrait of a younger writer. I started this collection with the intent of solely examining the craft choices made, if only to gain some nuggets of perspective what someone else has done so I can approach my own work with a better eye to recognize my own shortcomings, but while reading Night Shift, I also couldn’t help sensing moments where I felt I could almost get a sense of the man behind the words. That is this: a man pouring himself into his passion throughout the 1970’s so he can feed his family. And if ever there is an inspiring example of the American dream, isn’t it that?
I like to think so.
I’d like to recommend this collection to any writer interested in an doing an exploratory study into the craft of fiction. It has helped me a lot with pinpointing areas I want to work on with my own work while reminding me of areas where I’m better than I thought.
10/10, would read again.