Weekly Unfinished Tales and Short Stories from our Dataset
Welcome to our weekly dispatch from the ‘Unfinished Tales and Short Stories’ collection, a creative arts and research program born from an interdisciplinary experiment in narrative storytelling. These pieces represent fragments from a diverse dataset, generated as part of an exploration into the possibilities of narrative craft. At its core, this project was undertaken simply for the joy of it—for fun, and to learn what we can do when we combine different creative and technological approaches to see what new stories emerge.
These narrative experiments serve a dual purpose within our research framework. For our study into AI-Assisted Scriptwriting, they act as foundational material, allowing us to test methodologies for generating plot structures, character arcs, and alternative narrative pathways. Concurrently, they are instrumental in our Talent Development and Training focus, providing tangible case studies for creative professionals. By analyzing these varied story starts, we can better understand the evolving skills required to manage AI tools and interdisciplinary technologies, fostering digital literacy and new approaches to collaborative storytelling in the arts.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
The Glazed Path
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Young Adult (YA) | Genre: Literary Fiction
The city’s winter bites hard, transforming familiar paths into treacherous sheets of ice and slush. Amidst the grey, churning landscape of a university campus, Siobhán confronts the harsh realities of urban life, far from the quiet, predictable snows of her northern home, seeking a fragile foothold in a world that feels increasingly alien.
Glass Shards and Holly
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Urban Fantasy | Genre: Cyberpunk
The biting wind howled through the narrow canyons of Neo-London, carrying with it the metallic tang of acid rain and the faint, sickly-sweet scent of synthetic pine. Snow, already blackened by exhaust fumes and industrial fallout, clung stubbornly to the ledges of chrome-plated skyscrapers that pierced the bruised, winter sky. My breath fogged the internal visor of my cheap optical overlay, a common glitch with the discount models. Another Tuesday. Another layer of grime settling over everything. Especially me.
A Certain Shade of Crimson
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Medical Drama | Genre: Espionage / Spy Fiction
The city simmered, a vast, indifferent beast humming beneath a relentless summer sky. Air conditioning units rattled their metallic song from every window, a mechanical chorus against the chirp of unseen cicadas. Inside, the cool, artificial quiet of the university halls offered little respite from the oppressive heat, yet it carried its own brand of suffocating calm. Kim, a flicker of northern ice still in his gaze, navigated this unfamiliar landscape of concrete and quiet desperation, his mind a tangle of homesickness and nascent unease.
The Stasis of Snowdrift
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cinematic | Genre: Family Saga
The air in the station was a thick, humid brew of stale coffee, disinfectant, and the quiet desperation of hundreds. Snow, a relentless shroud, had descended upon Winnipeg, turning the grand, arched windows into blurry, frosted canvases. Outside, the world was a white-knuckle blur of wind and ice; inside, time had warped into a sluggish, elastic thing, stretching thin with every crackle of the PA system and every defeated sigh.
Carriage Five, Disconnected
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cinematic | Genre: Family Saga
The air in the Winnipeg train station was thick with the scent of lukewarm coffee, damp wool, and an underlying hum of human frustration. Outside, the world was a blur of white, but inside, hundreds of souls were trapped, their collective breath fogging the high windows, each person a tiny cog in the grinding gears of a Christmas gone sideways. My stomach rumbled, a small, sad protest against the interminable wait.
Design Notes and Applied Research
This collection demonstrates our program’s focus on artistic evolution by merging classic genres with contemporary subject matter. The inclusion of Cyberpunk and Espionage fiction directly explores the impact of digital transformation, while Literary Fiction and Family Sagas provide a framework for examining skills development across generations. These narratives, set within contexts from Urban Fantasy to Medical Drama, effectively investigate how technology and new media are reshaping the landscape of storytelling.
As an initiative, this project was a valuable experiment in thematic and structural convergence for our contributors. The process of applying established narrative techniques to the challenges of a digitized world proved to be an engaging and productive exercise. We consider this collection a successful inquiry into new creative methodologies and a strong foundation for future explorations at the intersection of art and technology.
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.
About the Author
