Esquire

Esquire published long pieces that became the defining accounts of their subjects. Esquire ran Tom Junod's "The Falling Man" about 9/11 and his Fred Rogers profile "Can You Say...Hero?", both now the standard pieces on their subjects. The photo only got the name "the falling man" after the Esquire story.

Junod wrote The Falling Man two years after the attacks, at about 7 or 8 thousand words, because the photo had run once and then almost never again. The 1998 Rogers profile came about because an editor thought it funny to send "the bad boy" to profile the good guy.

How I Write

When a draft falls flat, rebuild it around what first hooked you. Junod's last Esquire story, about a young woman who ran out of a Walmart and was never seen again, came in as a flat first draft. Editor David Granger reminded him everyone who hears the story becomes obsessed, asked why, and when Junod said it was a mystery, told him: "Write that."

The rewrite built around the mystery became the finished piece; the first draft had left out the good stuff.

How I Write▶ 44:56

Esquire treated ending a story on a quote as a failure. At Esquire the writer was expected to write all the way to a final sentence of their own rather than hand the ending to a source's quote. Junod pairs it with beginnings: the first sentence lets him start, the last lets him stop.

He has since ended a story or two on a quote at ESPN, but says he is still a write-to-the-last-sentence person.

How I Write▶ 54:21