Speculative fiction writer Anastasia Dubinina reshaped a scheduled literary talk into a dynamic, hands-on world-building session at the Royal Festival Hall’s Level 2 foyer, offering a London-themed deep dive into her creative process.
Initially billed as a discussion entitled “Building Worlds Beyond the Known”, the evening soon morphed into a collaborative workshop, as Dubinina took attendees through the world creation techniques behind her 2023 novel Shattered Horizons of Tarveran.
Using visual aids such as slides and printed maps, she broke down her process into three main pillars:
-
Civic Backstory – assembling a historical timeline of unseen political and economic events that “never appears on the page but shapes every street corner in the narrative”;
-
Spatial Logic vs. Corporate Ambition – determining how financial hubs and crumbling industrial zones intersect, then examining how these boundaries “influence character motives”;
-
Physics Under Stress – delaying the introduction of dimensional rifts until after the societal framework is in place, to ensure the anomaly “feels disruptive rather than decorative”.
The audience were encouraged to submit live questions, resulting in an engaging, interactive session tailored to writers, screenwriters, and game designers alike. Though scheduled for 90 minutes, the event overran as attendees sought further insights into “narrative cartography” and asked for replicable exercises.
Following the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response, Dubinina announced plans to expand into a series of smaller workshops focused on advanced world-building, including topics such as cultural logic, moral geography, and the challenges of “sustaining tension across multi-arc story worlds”.
