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 exploring narrative frontiers. The diverse fragments presented here are direct outputs from our ongoing experiments, a process undertaken simply for the joy of creation and to discover what new forms of storytelling we can do! These narrative seeds represent a playful yet rigorous inquiry into the collaborative potential between human creativity and emergent technologies, serving as a public archive of our journey.
These stories are instrumental to the project’s core objectives, serving as practical case studies in AI-Assisted Scriptwriting by testing the generation of varied plot structures and character arcs across multiple genres. For our research into Talent Development, these narrative experiments provide invaluable material for creative professionals, offering tangible scenarios to develop skills in managing AI tools, fostering digital literacy, and honing the interdisciplinary approaches required to navigate the evolving landscape of immersive and technologically-infused storytelling.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
The Lure and the Line
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Romance | Genre: Espionage / Spy Fiction
The afternoon heat of a Northern Ontario summer presses against the tall windows of the Cobalt Bay Community Museum, making the air inside thick with the smell of old paper and lemon-scented polish. Dust hangs in the shafts of sunlight, illuminating the quiet history of a town built on silver and timber, now guarding a different kind of secret.
A Fraying Patchwork of Green
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Dystopian | Genre: Fantasy
The autumn air in MetroCentre Park was a manufactured crispness, piped in via carbon scrubbers that hummed faintly beneath the paving stones. Leaves, genetically engineered for optimal colour retention, clung to their branches in perfect gradients of ochre and russet. Drones, no larger than wasps, conducted silent particulate matter scans, their tiny lenses reflecting a sky that was, by official decree, ‘optimally azure’. Andrew, his shoulders hunched in a worn, recycled-fibre coat, tracked his official route along the designated ‘Mindful Meander’ path, the digital chime of his wrist-monitor a constant, low thrum against the manufactured serenity.
The Orange Peel and the Algorithmic Fog
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Dystopian | Genre: Psychological Drama
The aroma of lukewarm coffee hung thick in the air, clashing with the synthetic tang of the ‘Optimal Productivity’ diffuser. Outside, the perpetual autumn drizzle blurred the city into a wash of grey and ochre, mirroring the dull ache behind my eyes. Another morning had dawned under the glow of the omnipresent Affinity Index, a silent monitor of our worth, perpetually cycling through its digital permutations, always just beyond reach.
Bloom Under Glass
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Dystopian | Genre: Coming-of-Age
Within the sterile perfection of a Bio-Dome, the protagonist grapples with the pervasive influence of social algorithms and influencer culture. The artificial spring blossoms around him as he questions the nature of authenticity in a world where everything is scored.
Finite Dust
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Paranormal Romance | Genre: Slice of Life
It’s a lie that dust is silent. It has a voice, a dry, papery whisper that speaks of shed skin and crumbled memories, and tonight, in the suffocating stillness of the archive, it is the only sound I can reliably name. The dehumidifier offers its monotonous, asthmatic hum from the corner, a mechanical prayer against the damp that forever threatens to turn this collection of a town’s life into a pulpy, unreadable mass of mould. But the dust is the true historian here, settling with democratic indifference on the pension records of lumber barons and the chipped teacups of farmers’ wives.
Design Notes and Applied Research
This collection showcases a notable range of narrative techniques central to our program’s focus on skills development. The selections move from the intricate plotting required by espionage and dystopian fiction to the deep character interiority of psychological drama and coming-of-age stories. This thematic and structural diversity demonstrates a strong, practical application of core storytelling principles across multiple demanding genres.
As an artifact of our “Digital Transformation” initiative, this curation highlights how varied creative works can be synthesized within a unified digital archive. The process of assembling these disparate pieces served as a valuable and engaging exploration into modern content presentation. This project has proven to be a dynamic and successful experiment, effectively bridging traditional narrative craft with contemporary digital practice.
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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