Stories that Sneak Up on Us
Weekly roundup: fueling strong stories, chatting with authors about their WIPs, learning business lessons, and an update from the OBA team
A new month and a new roundup! What’s been going on in your creative worlds lately?
The OBA team has officially wrapped filming the last episodes of season 1 for our podcasts “Let’s Talk Stories” and “Let’s Fix Stories.” This means we are headed into a bit of a summer vacation to gear up for doubling down on growing OBA Media into the champion for suppressed voices with an important story to tell that we envision the company being. This also means we have a bunch of meaningful discussions about exciting stories stored up that will be coming your way in our weekly newsletters, even as we take a step back from hanging out daily on Substack and other social medias.
is coming up on summer break to recover from the burnout of his teaching job. is recovering from a stress fracture and working through the arduous process of moving cross country in the next couple months. I am refocusing on all my personal projects that have been left on back burners and hopefully diving into my (extensive) reading list that is growing so fast the stacks are blocking my view out of my window from my reading chair.Prioritizing seasons of rest in between seasons of hard work is so important in order to not burn out from the crazy creative lifestyle. Having a community that helps each other prioritize this rest is one of the best ways we can support each other to tell strong stories. So: What are you doing in the next month or two to rejuvenate yourselves from the overwhelming grind of life? How do you replenish yourself after you’ve allowed creative output to drain you?
Cheers,
(One Brilliant Arc Editor-in-Chief)📑 WHAT WE’VE BEEN CHATTING ABOUT THIS WEEK
Mystery: Your Story’s Secret Weapon
We all love a little bit of mystery in our lives. The guy at work who says two words to everyone but still seems cooler than rollerblades. Or the celebrity who doesn’t have social media AT ALL. (Looking at you, Keanu Reeves.) Often, the less we know about something, the more intriguing it becomes.
The same principle applies to your stories. Not every story needs to provide all the answers. Sometimes, the most powerful moments come from what’s left unsaid. Ambiguity in storytelling is one of the most effective secret weapons in your toolkit.
This point hit me hard when I rediscovered a song I’d forgotten I loved until Spotify Wrapped reminded me of its brilliance. “Dear McCracken” by Bug Hunter tells the story of an unnamed speaker eavesdropping on a fellow passenger drafting an email on a plane. A simple moment—just a stranger writing to someone named McCracken—but the moment lingers with the speaker long after the plane lands.
The song is poetic, raw, and packed with incredible lyrics like, "The abuse of the backspace key…"
But why does the story of this interaction matter? What emotions are left unresolved? These questions—and the absence of explicit answers—are what make this song so damn good.
Let’s break down 3 reasons why you need to use ambiguity in your writing and how “Dear McCracken” uses this technique to keep you hooked long after the music stops.
🎧PODCAST: “Let’s Fix Stories!”
Did you catch our newest podcast episode? We chatted with author S.L. Zeidan about her upcoming romantasy novel, Inkbound, in a live editing session with OBA’s editors. What we discovered: a lot of times, some of the most powerful stories we write are the ones that we never saw coming.
Subscribers to our newsletter get an early release of every podcast episode we put out, both “Let’s Talk Stories” and “Let’s Fix Stories!”
Episode 3-"Inkbound"
The team of story coaches from One Brilliant Arc Media sit down with author S.L. Zeidan for a live editing session of her romantasy manuscript, "Inkbound." Pull back the curtain on what the process of getting a written draft polished for publishing looks like while we call out strengths in the manuscript, options for improvement, and prove that editing your story to be the best it can be doesn’t have to be a scary process! We discuss the story behind the story, how to use the nuances of satire, and the power of stories that demand to be told.
Catch up on our team’s previous conversations over good stories here:
💬 Question of the Week
We want to hear from you! OBA Nation exists as your community, after all. Let’s get to know each other and share creative perspectives. Last week, we asked you:
What media experience left you with unanswered questions in either the best or the worst way?
✨Here are some of your answers:
: “My answer is The Wailing, a Korean experience by Na Hong-jin. I think it's the first film ever that I was so invested in, I actually read up on various commentary and perspectives about it, just to answer some questions I had. It's one of the best horror/thriller movies out there in my opinion.”
: “The end of The Wingfeather Saga left me with unanswered questions, but definitely to the credit of the weight of the story. Depending on your perspective, you can see the ending as hopeful, bittersweet, or tragic, but each option is meaningful, poignant, and healing no matter your view of life. The author, Andrew Peterson, has stated that he will never add another book to the saga for this reason—the ending is supposed to sit with you and allow you the chance to add a piece of yourself to the story.”
Our question to you this week is based on the topic we will discuss in next Monday’s newsletter:
What story did you need to give a second chance to before you appreciated it?
Hit “reply” or comment to drop your answer. We’ll pick some of your responses to feature in our next roundup newsletter and tag you there!
CAPTAIN’S LOG
5/31/2025
Some of you may have noticed that we weren’t able to send out our usual Monday newsletter a couple weeks ago. I’m going to tell you the details of what happened not because I like outing myself for embarrassment over my ignorance, but because building a startup media company is hard, and some business lessons have to be learned the hard way. We promised to build in public and share our hard-learned lessons with you so that you can learn from our mistakes and have success in the things you are building, as well.
Our personal funds couldn’t cover the cost of renewing our domain for a couple of weeks. When our domain expired, not only did our Substack website page go down, but we were also locked out of our work email and our Substack dashboard, which meant we could not access the settings we needed to switch to a free subdomain in the interim. Since we haven’t started booking clients for our editing or coaching services as soon as we had hoped, OBA Media’s budget is still zilch. Anything we pay for comes out of our personal pockets. As the struggling creatives we are trying to build something meaningful without a foundation of privilege, or fame, or even middle-class money, our said personal pockets are not very deep. This means we have to use ingenuity to find solutions instead of throwing money at a problem.
The lesson learned: while it is worth the cost of having our own domain for a website to be able to funnel any leads from our networking across other social media platforms to, it is a wiser idea to not connect our work email account to the domain until we are making enough revenue to ensure the fees can be paid on time. Also, for all the great things that Substack is, it is still a developing platform. Bugs, slow support response times, and inefficient systems mean that our pivot to a solution wasn’t as quick as we would have liked and we need to factor those technical limitations into any future puzzles we have to solve.
Nevertheless, the problem is now fixed and we carry on with our flexibility, determination, and hard, genuine work!
It sounds like people are recovering from wounds mental and physical.
I have written and posted so much the past few weeks that I feel the urge to write something for myself. Something unpredictable and perhaps not so audience-centered. I shared a few ideas with Jared, but still kept it mysterious.