Glimpses of Love, Intrigue, and Adventure
These pages offer a collection of unfinished tales, each a vivid snapshot from a story in progress. They are designed to be evocative points of departure, allowing readers to fill in the missing details and envision the broader arc of each narrative. Expect beginnings and middles, waiting for your mental continuation.
This project explores the capabilities of human creativity working in concert with artificial intelligence. It is an exploration of how digital resources can assist in shaping new literary forms, thereby enriching digital literacy and widening the scope of storytelling.
This collection presents a range of styles, from the emotional landscape of Romance and the reflections of Contemporary Fiction, to the puzzle-solving of Mystery, the excitement of Action-Adventure, and the everyday observations of Slice of Life. These works are by Leaf Richards and Jamie F. Bell.
We invite you to engage directly with these stories. Consider each one a blueprint, an invitation to use your own imagination to construct the full edifice of the narrative.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Unpack a rich selection of short stories, encompassing Romance, Contemporary Fiction, Mystery, Action-Adventure, and Slice of Life genres, with categories like Dystopian, Gritty Realism, Young Adult (YA), and Psychological Thriller. This platform champions digital literacy by exploring the role of AI-assisted narrative in transforming publishing and the innovative future of creative technology.
Dust and Jasmine
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Dystopian | Genre: Romance
The afternoon light, strained through the smog-tinged summer air, cast long, distorted shadows across the plaza. The air was thick with the faint scent of ozone and the city’s ceaseless, electric hum from the overhead transportation arches. Pedestrians moved with a practiced, almost ritualistic efficiency, their faces mostly obscured by regulation-issued hoods against the solar glare, each person a solitary island in a sea of compelled proximity.
A Catalogue of Possible Futures
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Dystopian | Genre: Contemporary Fiction
The air in the conservatory was thick and sweet, smelling of damp earth and blooming orchids. It felt like a different planet from the concrete and exhaust of Flatbush Avenue just outside the gates. Sasha took a deep, theatrical breath. “See?” she said, a wide, bright smile on her face. “Clean air. A new start.” Her smile was a little too wide, a little too bright. It didn’t quite reach her eyes.
The Rusting Melody
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Gritty Realism | Genre: Mystery
The alley breathed cold, damp air, a narrow cut between two hulking brick buildings that had seen better centuries. It was early autumn, the kind that smelled of wet asphalt and decomposing leaves, clinging to the dampness in the air. A bruised light, grey and thin, bled from the sky above, barely reaching the grimy cobbles below where rainwater pooled in oily slicks. Graffiti, faded and layered, ghosted the brick, like old wounds refusing to heal. The distant murmur of city traffic was a constant, low thrum, a heartbeat against the stillness of this forgotten corridor. A single, broken streetlight, its glass shattered, looked down like a blind eye, promising darkness before the night truly fell.
The Weight of Iron and Doubt
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Young Adult (YA) | Genre: Action-Adventure
A bitter, late autumn wind, sharp with the tang of rusted metal and forgotten industry, whipped through the skeletal remains of the old processing plant. Moonlight, thin and bruised, struggled to penetrate the cloud of dust kicked up by something large, something relentless, moving in the gloom. The air thrummed with a low, predatory hum, vibrating through the cracked concrete and the very bones of the teenagers who pressed themselves against cold, unforgiving steel.
Kintsugi for a Fractured Playlist
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Psychological Thriller | Genre: Slice of Life
The old park bench is long enough that two people can sit on it and pretend they are alone. A careful, deliberate distance separates Dan and Ryan, a silence measured not in inches, but in unspoken apologies and the painful memory of last Saturday night. A single white wire snakes between them, connecting them to the same song but not, it seems, to each other.
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.
