Weekly Unfinished Tales and Short Stories from our Dataset
This daily collection offers a curated glimpse into the ‘Unfinished Tales and Short Stories’ project, an interdisciplinary creative arts and narrative storytelling experiment. These brief narratives, drawn from our extensive dataset, represent a dynamic exploration into the craft of story, showcasing diverse genres, settings, and character studies that emerge from our ongoing research.
Crucially, these stories serve a dual purpose within the project: they act as vital data points for examining AI-assisted storytelling techniques, particularly in generating ideas and alternative plot structures. Concurrently, they illuminate critical insights into talent development, identifying the evolving skills required for creative professionals navigating AI and immersive technologies, fostering digital literacy and interdisciplinary approaches in narrative creation.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
A Bent Lamppost and Wet Earth
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Allegorical | Genre: Crime Procedural
A biting spring wind, thick with the scent of damp soil and nascent green, whipped at Sasha’s threadbare jacket. The streetlights of Briarwood blinked on and off with a lazy, intermittent rhythm, casting long, fractured shadows that danced like uneasy spectres over the puddles. The sky, a bruised purple, promised rain that had yet to fall, holding its breath over the dormant fields bordering the town. Every gust carried the distant, reedy cry of geese migrating north, a sound that usually felt like hope, but tonight, under the heavy sky, felt more like a lament.
The Viscount’s Vengeance, Take Twelve
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Comedy | Genre: Cozy Mystery
The oppressive heat of the late afternoon summer clung to the old Oakhaven Playhouse like a damp shroud, permeating the velvet seats and the dusty stage. Every breath felt thick with the smell of old wood, sweat, and the faint, metallic tang of forgotten stage lights. On the stage, under a single, unforgiving work light, two figures moved with the weary grace of those accustomed to carrying the weight of absurdity.
A Concrete Blossom
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Allegorical | Genre: Dark Comedy
The asphalt, still radiating the day’s forgotten heat, stretched before them like a vast, dark tongue. Overhead, clouds like bruised fruit obscured the moon, leaving only a sickly city glow to paint the humid air in shades of murky grey. A distant siren wailed, a brief, mournful sound, then succumbed to the heavy, insect-laced quiet of a summer night teetering on the edge of the truly late. It was the kind of night where every rustle felt amplified, every shadow a little too deep, and the world seemed to hold its breath.
The Cage Noise
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Allegorical | Genre: Dystopian
The chill of the manufactured spring evening seeped into the city’s bones, clinging to the polished chromesteel facades and the scant, genetically engineered blossoms that studded the urban planters. A perpetual, muted glow, siphoned from the upper atmosphere, rendered the sky a perpetual twilight, never quite dark enough to hide, never bright enough to truly reveal. Tara, her breath a brief, wispy cloud, kept pace with Bernard, the rhythmic tap of their synthetic-soled boots on the immaculately paved promenade a solitary counterpoint to the city’s ubiquitous, almost imperceptible hum. This hum, a low thrumming resonance, was the city’s pulse, its promise, and its ever-present threat.
Unfurling Bark
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Colloquial / Conversational | Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Late autumn had stripped the park down to its skeletal truth. The air carried the damp, earthy scent of decaying leaves and the distant, metallic tang of city traffic. Bare branches scraped a grey sky, and a few stubborn sparrows hopped across the damp asphalt path, pecking at forgotten crumbs. A sense of quiet resignation hung heavy, broken only by the crunch of solitary footsteps or the rustle of a forgotten plastic bag caught in a thorny bush.
Design Notes and Applied Research
Today’s collection, spanning Crime Procedural, Cozy Mystery, Dark Comedy, Dystopian, and Contemporary Fiction, alongside Allegorical, Comedy, and Colloquial narrative styles, directly reflects our project’s focus on skills development. These diverse genres and subject categories demand distinct narrative techniques, intricate plotting, and sophisticated thematic exploration, honing a broad spectrum of storytelling proficiencies. Such an array also highlights the evolving nature of narrative in the digital age, demonstrating how traditional forms are adapted and recontextualized for contemporary audiences and platforms.
This initiative served as a valuable experimental platform, allowing participants to explore the boundaries of these varied storytelling forms within the context of digital transformation. The engagement with such a wide narrative spectrum proved to be an enjoyable and insightful endeavor for all involved. We anticipate that the insights gained from this creative exploration will inform future approaches to narrative development in the arts.
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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