Weekly Unfinished Tales and Short Stories from our Dataset
Welcome to our weekly digest from the “Unfinished Tales and Short Stories” collection, an ongoing creative arts and research program. This dataset originates from an interdisciplinary experiment, undertaken primarily for the joy of creative exploration and to better understand what we can do at the intersection of narrative and technology. What began as a fun exercise in storytelling has evolved into a rich repository of narrative fragments, character sketches, and nascent plotlines.
These stories serve as foundational assets for our project’s core research objectives. In our study of AI-Assisted Scriptwriting, these varied tales provide the raw material for generating and analyzing alternative story arcs and complex plot structures. Concurrently, they are instrumental in our Talent Development research, allowing us to examine the evolving skill sets required for creative professionals. By studying these narratives, we gain insight into the digital literacy and interdisciplinary approaches necessary for managing the next wave of immersive and AI-driven storytelling technologies.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
A Scrimmage of Frayed Ends
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Romance | Genre: Sports Fiction
The smell of stale sweat and ancient linoleum clung to the air, a scent Ed knew better than his own skin. It was late spring, the kind of Winnipeg afternoon where the sun tried to push through a persistent grey, failing, leaving a muted, heavy light. Dust motes, tiny universes of detritus, danced in the weak shafts of light slicing through the high, grimy windows of the North End Community Centre gym. His knuckles ached, a familiar phantom limb sensation, years after the last real game, years after the incident that had carved a deep fissure through his life. He bounced the old, scuffed basketball, the rhythm a hollow thud against the silence, a counterpoint to the relentless drum of what-ifs in his mind. He was thirty-four, and the dream felt as distant as another lifetime.
The Chill Mark
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Gritty Realism | Genre: Mystery
The alley breathed out a damp, biting chill, a forgotten channel between brick facades that had long ago surrendered their colour to grime and exhaust. Patches of old snow, hardened to a greyish ice, clung to the corners, reflecting the weak, exhausted light that bled from the indifferent winter sky. A faint, almost imperceptible hum of distant city traffic underscored the pervasive silence, broken only by the drip of a slowly thawing icicle from a faulty gutter. It was a place designed to be ignored, to be passed over, its secrets buried under layers of urban decay.
The Scramble for Stone
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Adventure | Genre: Action-Adventure
The city of Winnipeg still slept, wrapped in the cool, grey embrace of an early spring morning. A faint, almost imperceptible blush of rose coloured the eastern sky, hinting at the sun’s reluctant ascent. In a narrow, brick-lined alley, two figures moved with a clandestine grace that belied their years, their breath misting in the crisp air, the air alive with the promise of burgeoning life and a touch of mischief.
The Absurd Reclamation of Concrete Dreams
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Surreal / Absurdist | Genre: Satire
The air, crisp and biting, carried the scent of wet leaves and the distant, metallic tang of a bus idling too long. It was one of those Winnipeg autumn days where the sky hung like a bruised plum, promising nothing but more grey. Streets, usually bustling, felt hollowed out, punctuated now by the insidious, low thrum emanating from the city’s newest, most baffling installation: the ‘Optimism Orbs.’ These iridescent, basketball-sized spheres pulsed a sickly violet, hovering just above eye-level at various intersections, supposedly to uplift spirits. They mostly just gave people headaches.
The Threadbare Clue
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Gritty Realism | Genre: Mystery
The alley, a damp vein in the city’s tired heart, exhaled the scent of mouldering leaves and stale refuse. A thin, anemic light from a distant lamp struggled against the encroaching autumn gloom, painting the slick cobblestones in shades of bruised indigo and murky ochre. It was a place of forgotten things, a narrow passage between brick walls that wore their age like scarred skin, each crack and crevice holding the city’s untold secrets.
Design Notes and Applied Research
This collection showcases a dynamic range of narrative forms, reflecting our program’s focus on versatile skills development. The fusion of genres like Sports Fiction with subjects such as Gritty Realism demonstrates our participants’ ability to navigate complex tonal and structural demands. These works explore how digital platforms provide new avenues for blending established conventions, from the suspense of Mystery to the social critique of Satire.
As an archival entry, this selection serves as a record of our program’s inquiry into narrative experimentation. The exercise of pairing disparate elements, such as Action-Adventure with the Surreal, fostered an environment of creative risk-taking. The resulting stories provide a compelling snapshot of this process, highlighting the innovative potential that emerges when artists deconstruct and reassemble storytelling traditions.
About the Project
The Unfinished Tales and Short Stories collection was an interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment in 2025. It was part of a creative arts and participatory research project by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners collectives. It focuses on two key areas: AI-Assisted Storytelling and Scriptwriting, exploring AI tools for generating ideas, plot structures, and story arcs; and Talent Development and Training, studying digital skills, literacy and training needs for creative professionals by experimenting with AI and immersive technologies to inform future projects. Funding and support were generously provided by the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program and the Government of Ontario. We thank them for supporting the arts, digital transformation, and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) research.
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