Weekly Unfinished Tales and Short Stories from our Dataset
Welcome to our weekly collection of narrative experiments, drawn directly from the dataset of our ongoing creative arts and research program, ‘Unfinished Tales and Short Stories.’ This interdisciplinary project was undertaken as an exploratory venture, driven by a simple, powerful curiosity—it was for fun, and to learn what we can do! The fragments presented here represent a diverse range of genres and narrative styles, from quiet character studies set against vast landscapes to tense, atmospheric horror, each offering a unique window into the storytelling process.
These short stories and narrative fragments serve as critical assets for our primary research objectives. For our work in AI-Assisted Scriptwriting, they function as foundational prompts and stylistic benchmarks, allowing us to explore how generative models can develop plot structures, create alternative story arcs, and generate compelling dialogue. Concurrently, they are instrumental in our Talent Development and Training studies, providing tangible case studies for creative professionals learning to manage AI tools, navigate immersive technologies, and foster the interdisciplinary collaboration essential for the future of digital and narrative arts.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Mud-Season Blues and Unfettered Roots
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Boys Love (BL) | Genre: Literary Fiction
The spring thaw had turned the back roads into a viscous, tyre-sucking mess, a testament to nature’s indifferent power. Mud, thick and clinging like a bad memory, churned underfoot, painting everything a dull, earthy brown. The air, crisp and damp, carried the faint, metallic tang of exposed soil and the promise of new, relentless growth. It was a season of half-promises and lingering cold, a grey-sky canvas for the mundane struggles of a young man caught between expectation and the unsettling pull of the unknown.
The Golden Gleam on the Great Grey Beast
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Adventure | Genre: Action-Adventure
The air hung heavy, a wet blanket of early spring over the city centre. Buildings, grey brick and gleaming glass, sucked at the low clouds, their edges softened by a recent, brief drizzle. Puddles shimmered on the broad pavement, catching the pale, watery sun as it wrestled with the persistent grey. Everything smelled of damp concrete and something new, green, pushing up from planter boxes. A distant tram hummed past, its cables sighing overhead, a metallic whisper in the vast, quiet morning, just before the city truly woke. But for two figures, hunched low by a public art installation, the day had already begun its strange, urgent song.
The Hum of the Great Divide
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Boys Love (BL) | Genre: Coming-of-Age
The big coach bus churned through the fading light, a low, mechanical hum vibrating through the floorboards and up into James’s bones. Outside, the last vestiges of late autumn in Minnesota bled into the pale, bruised purple of an early evening sky. Fields stretched to a hazy horizon, flat and featureless, occasionally punctuated by skeletal trees or the lonely glow of a distant farmhouse.
Bentonite Pixels
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Slice of Life | Genre: Slice of Life
A freezing garage in Northern Ontario turned into a high-tech editing suite, filled with the hum of overworked computers and the smell of stale coffee.
Jagged Refractions
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Horror | Genre: Horror
The air was thick, a metallic tang of rust and the cloying sweetness of rot. Rain had found its way through gaps in the corrugated roof, painting streaks of grime down warped plywood walls. Every groan of the decaying structure echoed, a symphony of decay in the damp, cool spring morning. Somewhere, a distorted, tinny music box tune scratched at the edge of hearing, just loud enough to be an insult.
Design Notes and Applied Research
This daily collection demonstrates a significant range of narrative approaches, reflecting our program’s focus on skills development. The juxtaposition of genres, from character-driven Slice of Life and Coming-of-Age to plot-focused Action-Adventure and Horror, highlights the diverse technical and emotional palettes our creators are honing. The exploration of specific subjects like Boys Love (BL) further illustrates how digital transformation enables artists to engage with specialized forms and find new audiences.
This curation has been a productive and creatively stimulating experiment for the incubator. Placing these varied forms in direct conversation allowed us to examine new artistic intersections and challenge conventional narrative boundaries. The collection serves as a dynamic record of this inquiry, documenting the expanding possibilities for storytelling in the digital age.
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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