Discovering Narratives in Progress
This collection offers a unique journey into the heart of storytelling. Each piece is an incomplete narrative fragment, a moment captured mid-scene, or a page torn from a larger book. They invite your imagination to fill in the gaps, pondering what came before and envisioning what might happen next.
This project stands as an experiment at the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence. It explores how digital tools can act as a partner in the writing process, shaping new forms of storytelling and enhancing digital literacy in a collaborative environment.
This collection spans genres from evocative Dystopian and Sports Fiction to poignant Slice of Life, Coming-of-Age, and thrilling Action-Adventure. Among the contributors are Eva Suluk, Tony Eetak, Leaf Richards, and Jamie F. Bell.
We invite you to explore these unfinished tales not just as a reader, but as a co-creator, completing the narrative in your own mind and shaping its ultimate direction.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
From Dystopian and Action-Adventure narratives to Slice of Life and Coming-of-Age tales, encompassing diverse categories such as Horror and Historical Fiction, our platform champions digital literacy. We utilize creative technology to produce engaging short stories, exploring the evolving landscape of AI-assisted narrative and the future of digital publishing.
The Glint in the Murmur
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Horror | Genre: Dystopian
The air, thick with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, hung heavy over the city. Rust-coloured sycamores scraped against the bruised twilight sky, their skeletal branches making a brittle music against the persistent, low hum that had settled into the very foundations of the world. It was a sound that existed just beneath perception, like the thrum of blood in one’s own ears, only external and omnipresent. Lamplight, the few remaining, cast long, wavering shadows across cobbled alleyways, illuminating patches of condensation that clung like cold sweat to brickwork. The usual hurried evening chatter was gone, replaced by a sporadic, disquieting quiet broken by distant, unidentifiable sounds that made the back of my neck prickle. Autumn, with its melancholic beauty, had never felt quite so… brittle.
A Scrimmage of Frayed Ends
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Romance | Genre: Sports Fiction
The smell of stale sweat and ancient linoleum clung to the air, a scent Ed knew better than his own skin. It was late spring, the kind of Winnipeg afternoon where the sun tried to push through a persistent grey, failing, leaving a muted, heavy light. Dust motes, tiny universes of detritus, danced in the weak shafts of light slicing through the high, grimy windows of the North End Community Centre gym. His knuckles ached, a familiar phantom limb sensation, years after the last real game, years after the incident that had carved a deep fissure through his life. He bounced the old, scuffed basketball, the rhythm a hollow thud against the silence, a counterpoint to the relentless drum of what-ifs in his mind. He was thirty-four, and the dream felt as distant as another lifetime.
A Season of Dissolution
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Epistolary | Genre: Slice of Life
The river, swollen with recent melt, dragged its grey-green body through the forest’s throat. Overhead, the nascent canopy, a tender, almost violent green, shivered with a wind that carried the metallic tang of damp earth and something else, something less definable – a slow, unsettling hum beneath the usual spring din. Each new leaf felt too eager, too perfectly formed, a little plastic in its sheen. The air itself seemed to vibrate with an unseen pressure.
The Payphone at Sal’s
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cinematic | Genre: Coming-of-Age
A dusty, forgotten Italian restaurant on a rainy autumn afternoon, where two aging industry professionals attempt to ignore a persistent intrusion.
The Chilly Northern Light
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Historical Fiction | Genre: Action-Adventure
The wind had a bite, a real snarl to it, stripping the last defiant leaves from the scraggly poplars clinging to the northern shores. Grey light bled across the water, making the whitecaps look like bared teeth. Autumn had deepened its grip on Hudson Bay, and the air tasted of brine and impending ice. On the deck of the Osprey, the spray was a constant, stinging shower, freezing the ropes into rigid cables. Declan, barely out of his teens, hugged his thick wool coat tighter, the rough fabric chafing his chin. His breath plumed, a brief ghost against the vast, unforgiving expanse. He squinted, trying to pierce the gloom ahead, but the horizon remained an unbroken line of grey meeting greyer.
About the Project
By design, these stories have no beginning and no end. Many stories are fictional, but many others are not. They are snapshots from worlds that never fully exist, inviting you to imagine what comes before and what happens next. We had fun exploring this project, and hope you will too.
The Unfinished Tales and Short Stories collection is an experimental, creative research project by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners Storytelling clubs. Each chapter is a unique interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment, born from a collaboration between artists and applied AI researchers, designed to explore the boundaries of creative writing, automation, and storytelling. The project was made possible with funding and support from the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program and the Government of Ontario.
