Domino is the name of a popular pizza chain, but it’s also the name of a series of events that starts small and then grows exponentially until it has greater–even catastrophic–consequences. It’s an apt metaphor for life, and it’s a reminder that one small thing can have big consequences.
Domino has been in business for over 50 years, and it was started by two brothers in Ypsilanti, Michigan in the 1960s. In the early days, Domino’s focused on delivering quickly to a core audience. The strategy was a big part of the company’s success, and it helped the Domino’s brand grow.
Today, the Domino’s brand has over 20,000 locations. They’re still focused on delivering fast and efficiently, but they also focus on customer service and building a strong brand. The company has also made several moves in recent years to diversify their menu and open new stores in nontraditional locations, such as malls and airports.
While Domino’s has many successful strategies, it’s important to remember that a single domino can tip over a line of dozens or hundreds of other dominoes. When this happens, the dominoes must all be set up properly to allow for the best results. That’s why it’s important to test out your setup before putting in the time and effort to create an intricate domino display.
Lily Hevesh began playing with dominoes at age 9, and her grandparents gave her a classic 28-piece set. She loved setting up the dominoes in straight or curved lines and flicking them to watch them fall one after another.
By the time she was a teenager, Hevesh had begun to post videos of her domino setups online. By the time she was 20, she had developed into a professional domino artist, working on projects that can take weeks to complete. Hevesh’s biggest domino installations are circular, and they can contain as many as 76,017 pieces. Her largest displays require several nail-biting minutes to fall, and they’re only made possible by a few key physical phenomena.
One of the most important of these is gravity, which pulls a knocked-over domino down toward Earth and sets off the next domino toppling on its way. This force is what allows Hevesh to build her amazing domino designs. If she weren’t able to rely on this principle, her dominoes wouldn’t be as perfect as they are.
Just like a domino effect, a story needs to have the right sequence of scenes in order to advance and engage the reader. If a scene comes along that doesn’t advance the plot or feels too long (heavy on details and minutiae) or isn’t logically connected to the scene before it, readers will probably lose interest. Whether you’re a panster who writes on the fly or an outliner who uses tools like Scrivener, thinking about how to set up your scenes will help them come together in a way that is both pleasing to the eye and builds momentum for the rest of your book.