A friendly-but-weird AI robot made of letters and punctuation holding a tiny 100-word story.
Posted in The AI Drabble Challenge

The AI Drabble Challenge – Week #2: ‘The Umbrella Left Behind’

Posted on by Mike

Welcome back to the AI Drabble Challenge, a weekly experiment in human and AI creativity. Each Wednesday, I set a prompt to inspire a Drabble, a story told in exactly 100 words.

You can use any AI model you like (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or others), or several at once. How you collaborate is up to you. Maybe the AI drafts the first version, or writes the whole thing, maybe you co-write, or maybe you use it to spark ideas. What matters is the process, and sharing it.

This Week’s Prompt

Image Prompt:

A closed umbrella leaning against a wall at a deserted railway platform.

Word prompts: echo, ticket, waiting, rain, promise

Use the image, the words, or both, and see where your imagination (and your chosen AI) takes you. Remember: exactly 100 words, no more, no less.

How to Take Part

  1. Write your 100-word Drabble with help from an AI tool (or two).
  2. Post your story in the comments, or publish it on your own website and include a pingback to this post.
  3. If you can, share which AI model(s) you used and the prompt that started your process, we can all learn from each other.

Community & Highlights

Each week, I’ll read through the entries, share a few favourites, and highlight one that particularly stood out, for originality, style, or the inventive way it used AI.

This isn’t about competition; it’s about curiosity, experimentation, and celebrating how humans and machines can create together.

A Closing Thought

AI gives us the tools, but we give it meaning. Let’s see what stories emerge this week, 100 words at a time.

About The Author

Mike is a retired headteacher, writer, and lifelong learner exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping creativity, communication, and everyday life. Through The AI Grandad, he shares hands-on experiments, honest reflections, and a touch of humour about being 75 and still curious about the future.

When he’s not writing, Mike can usually be found testing new AI tools, reading crime fiction, or tucked away in a local coffee shop writing in his journal.

A surreal kitchen where glowing alien creatures hover around a kettle, blending science fiction with gentle British humour.
Posted in Writing with AI

The Blorptickle Experiment: When AI Meets Nonsense

Posted on by Mike

Every now and then, I like to give my AI a challenge that even I can’t predict the outcome of. This time, I asked ChatGPT to give me three completely made-up words. It obliged with Blorptickle, Snindlewump, and Grathoon.

No meaning. No clues. Just three syllabic oddities plucked from the imagination.

I wanted to see what would happen if I asked the AI to connect them, to build a world around nonsense. Would it make sense of the senseless, or collapse into gibberish?

Here is the prompt I gave ChatGPT

Can you write a 200 word story where these three nonsense words – Blorptickle, Snindlewump and Grathoon are linked and serve as a prompt. Surprise me with your story.


Here’s what it came up with.

The Grathoon Accord

(A 200-word story written by AI)

The first Blorptickle arrived in my sink on a Tuesday, small, glowing, and humming the EastEnders theme through its pores. I assumed it was a hallucination. But by Wednesday, three more appeared, arguing about whose turn it was to exfoliate the Snindlewump.

The Snindlewump, for the record, lived in my bread bin. It spoke only in sighs, smelled faintly of lemon polish, and insisted it was my conscience. I disagreed. My conscience wouldn’t eat the toaster.

Then came the Grathoon, a towering, translucent being made of static and grammar corrections. It entered through the Wi-Fi and declared, in perfect BBC English, that my kitchen had been chosen as the site of the “Inter-Dimensional Treaty of Mild Inconveniences.”

By Thursday, negotiations were underway. The Blorptickles demanded equal fridge rights. The Snindlewump wanted peace, or possibly a sandwich. The Grathoon kept rewriting everyone’s statements for clarity.

On Friday, I woke to silence. Just crumbs, a faint lemon scent, and a note on the counter: “Treaty ratified. You were a surprisingly competent species.”

The kettle hasn’t worked since. But sometimes, if I listen closely, it hums the EastEnders theme, in perfect harmony.

Reflections from The AI Grandad

What fascinates me is how the AI took those three nonsense words and built a logic of its own. It didn’t just invent creatures, it created a miniature world with tone, rhythm, and even a sly British sense of humour.

To me, that’s the magic of experimenting with AI storytelling: the balance between absurdity and coherence. Give it chaos, and it will still try to make meaning.

And perhaps that’s a little like being human, constantly negotiating our own “Treaty of Mild Inconveniences.”

What Do You Think?

Could nonsense be a key to creativity, for humans and AI alike? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

About The Author

Mike is a retired headteacher, writer, and lifelong learner exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping creativity, communication, and everyday life. Through The AI Grandad, he shares hands-on experiments, honest reflections, and a touch of humour about being 75 and still curious about the future.

When he’s not writing, Mike can usually be found testing new AI tools, reading crime fiction, or tucked away in a local coffee shop writing in his journal.

A human hand and a robotic hand both writing in a notebook, words floating into the air,
Posted in AI and Creativity

Does the Average Reader Care If a Story Is Written by AI?

Posted on by Mike

I’ve been wondering about this lately. As someone who experiments with AI to write everything from short stories to blog posts, I often ask myself: does it really matter to the reader who wrote the words, me or the machine? I have a lot of writer friends who say that it does.

But the more I explore, the more personal it feels. I’ve watched people read my AI-written stories with genuine emotion, only for that expression to shift when I reveal the author wasn’t entirely human. It’s in that moment, between curiosity and unease, that I realise we’re in new storytelling territory.

Continue reading “Does the Average Reader Care If a Story Is Written by AI?” →
A face rising out of a steaming coffee mug
Posted in AI and Creativity

The Last Cup: When AI Writes About Burnout Better Than We Do

Posted on by Mike

Every now and again, I like to let AI take the pen, or in this case, the keyboard. The Last Cup is one of those experiments: a short story written entirely by AI with no edits from me. What fascinates me is how it captures something so human, exhaustion, ambition, and that quiet realisation that work might be drinking us dry. It made me wonder: when AI writes about burnout, is it simply echoing us, or holding up a mirror we’d rather not face?

Continue reading “The Last Cup: When AI Writes About Burnout Better Than We Do” →
Surreal illustration of a man with a miniature city growing from his head, symbolising urban overthinking and creative sprawl.
Posted in AI and Creativity

When AI Edits Itself: A Story, a Self-Critique, and a Lesson in Machine Creativity

Posted on by Mike

This week, I decided to hand the red pen to the machine. I asked AI not only to write a story but also to critique and rewrite it using its own feedback. Think of it as a creative writing class where the child and the teacher are the same machine, equal parts fascinating and faintly unsettling.

As someone who’s spent a lifetime teaching others to think critically, I wanted to see what happens when the critic and the creator merge. Could an AI recognise emotion, clichés, and rhythm in its own writing, or would it just reshuffle words?

Continue reading “When AI Edits Itself: A Story, a Self-Critique, and a Lesson in Machine Creativity” →