Weekly Unfinished Tales and Short Stories from our Dataset
Welcome to our weekly collection of narrative experiments, drawn from the diverse dataset of our ongoing ‘Unfinished Tales and Short Stories’ project. This creative arts and research program was initiated as an interdisciplinary exploration into the craft of storytelling, undertaken simply for the joy of creation and to discover what new narrative forms we could achieve. The stories presented here are artifacts of that process, offering glimpses into varied genres and character studies born from a spirit of playful inquiry.
These narrative fragments serve a dual purpose within our research framework. For our work in AI-Assisted Scriptwriting, they act as foundational prompts and stylistic benchmarks, allowing us to study how generative models handle plot structures, character voice, and tonal shifts across disparate genres. Concurrently, these tales are instrumental in our Talent Development studies, providing tangible case material to analyze the evolving skill sets required for creative professionals who must navigate interdisciplinary approaches and manage the integration of AI and other immersive technologies into their workflow.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Gold and Memory
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Sports Fiction | Genre: Sports Fiction
The frigid air of the arena, thick with the scent of ozone and polished ice, vibrated with a contained energy. Above, banners from forgotten championships sagged slightly, dusted with frost. On the sheet, a curling stone, burnished granite, carved a precise path towards the house, its rhythmic scrape against the pebbled ice the only sound that truly mattered in that charged moment. Two figures, senior in years but agile in spirit, swept with a furious dedication, their brooms a blur of focused effort.
Tinsel and Treachery
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Gothic Horror | Genre: Thriller
The air bit, sharp and unwelcome, even through the thin fabric of my jacket. Outside, the world was a postcard of fake cheer, all twinkling lights and snow that hadn’t yet turned to slush. Inside, behind the frosted panes, I knew it would be worse: forced smiles, cloying carols, and the clatter of silver against porcelain. But I wasn’t there for the mince pies. I was there for something far less palatable, a little piece of history someone else wanted buried.
The Glitch in the Carol
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Legal Thriller | Genre: Cyberpunk
The perpetual twilight of Neo-London’s Block 7 settled like a shroud. A sickly orange glow from the mega-towers bled into the pre-dawn greys, reflecting off the slick, rain-streaked ferrocrete below. The air, thick with the tang of ozone and synthetic exhaust, bit at exposed skin, promising a Christmas Eve more grim than festive.
A Fabric of Untruths
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cosmic Horror | Genre: Action-Adventure
A crisp, relentless autumn wind, redolent with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, clawed at the periphery of the ancient Blackwood. Beneath a sky the colour of unpolished pewter, two figures, small yet brimming with a gravity far beyond their years, commenced a clandestine operation. The world was cold and vast, indifferent to their monumental purpose, yet every crunch of frost-nipped foliage beneath their ill-fitting boots was a testament to their unwavering, if misguided, resolve.
The Leaves
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Horror | Genre: Horror
The autumn air outside Arnold’s window hung heavy and damp, the last vestiges of daylight bleeding from a bruised sky. Inside, the quiet hum of the old house was broken only by the distant murmur of the television and the clink of ice in a forgotten glass. He sat, a man etched by time and solitude, observing the way the fading light played tricks on the browning leaves, a prelude to a chill that had nothing to do with the season.
Design Notes and Applied Research
This collection from our “Storytelling and the Arts” program demonstrates a focused exploration of genre mechanics and thematic depth. The entries in sports fiction and legal thrillers showcase the development of rigorous plotting and character pacing, while the horror and cyberpunk selections engage directly with our initiative’s digital transformation focus. These works examine how technology shapes modern anxieties and alters the very structure of narrative suspense.
The juxtaposition of these distinct categories served as a productive and engaging experiment for our participants. This project provided a dynamic framework for artists to test the boundaries of their craft, applying new digital tools to established narrative forms. The resulting collection is a compelling record of the skills developed and the creative possibilities unlocked during this phase of the program.
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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