Domino is a game of strategy and skill. Its rules can be complicated, but the basics are simple enough for anyone to pick up and play. In addition to the standard straight lines of dominoes, players can create curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, and even 3D structures like towers and pyramids.
The domino effect is the way a small event can cause a chain reaction that eventually affects many other events, such as a riot that spreads and grows out of control. The term is also used to describe a political or economic situation that has the same kind of cascading effect. It is possible to predict the direction of a domino effect, although not exactly when or how it will occur.
A domino is a small, oblong tile with a number or blank face on one side and an arrangement of spots on the other. The spots, called pips, are usually arranged in a pattern similar to those on a die, though some tiles have none at all. The domino is normally twice as long as it is wide, and its value is determined by the number of pips on each end, which are sometimes called “ends” or “pips”. A double has two ends with the same number of pips; a single has only one.
The word domino, like the game itself, has an obscure origin. It was apparently coined in France shortly after 1750, and may have been derived from the Latin dominus, meaning lord or master. In an earlier sense, it denoted a hooded cloak worn with a mask for carnival season or at masquerades.
There are hundreds of different domino games. Most of them involve laying down one domino next to another in such a way that the numbers (or blanks) on adjacent dominoes match each other. Some are played with just one or more dominoes, while others use multiple sets and involve several players.
A good book for learning about the basic rules of many domino games is The Great Book of Domino Games, by Jennifer A. Kelley. This book explains how to set up the dominoes and describes how they fall. It is not an exhaustive list of all possibilities, however, and you can find many other books that offer more variations on the themes.
If you compose your manuscript off the cuff, rather than using an outline or writing software such as Scrivener to plan out your scenes, then you’ll likely find yourself with scenes that don’t have the right pace or impact on the scene that precedes it. These scenes will be at the wrong angle or they will not have enough logical impact to build suspense.
The key is to use the domino effect as your guide for constructing scenes that advance your story in a satisfying manner. Your hero will need sufficient logic and motivation to make readers accept his or her actions if they run counter to societal norms.
