Dominoes are a favorite pastime for children, and even adults can enjoy the challenge of stacking them end to end and then knocking them over. But the fun doesn’t stop there — you can use the individual pieces to create complex domino art that looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before. You can build straight lines, curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, stacked walls, or even 3-D structures like towers and pyramids. And whatever you do, it takes a great deal of planning to make a domino rally work.
The term domino refers to any of 28 small, oblong pieces that are blank or bearing from one to six pips or dots: 28 such tiles form a complete set. The term also refers to the various games played with the dominoes, including a form of chance called poker with the addition of cards, as well as a variety of other activities and displays of the pieces, such as drawing and painting them.
In his book The Domino Effect, author Jeff Doyle explains that the way that dominoes fall is not only interesting to watch, but is an effective metaphor for the chain reaction of events in any sort of situation. The domino effect is often used by politicians to explain the consequences of actions they take, such as President Eisenhower’s reference to Communism spreading throughout the world like a falling domino during a press conference regarding America’s decision to provide aid to South Vietnam. However, the term is more generally used to describe any series of events that continue to happen over time, no matter the initial trigger.
When you’re writing a story, whether you’re a pantser who writes off the cuff or you have a detailed outline, the plotting process often comes down to one question: what happens next? If you think of the scenes in your novel as dominoes, it’s important to make sure that each scene logically connects to the one before it.
The easiest way to do this is by using a program such as Scrivener that allows you to see how your manuscript is structured. You can then go back and make sure that each scene is at the right angle and has enough logical impact on the scenes preceding it. If not, it’s time to nudge that scene into place. Just don’t be surprised if you run into some unexpected resistance along the way!