Domino is a game of skill and chance. It can be played with one or more people and is very popular around the world. The game is played with domino pieces which are normally twice as long as they are wide. Each of the ends has a number of spots or pips which determine its value. Values range from a single spot or blank (called a zero) to six pips in the most common variant, double-six. During the game players alternately extend a chain of dominoes by placing a domino edge to edge against another in such a way that the adjacent faces match each other or form some specified total.
Whether you’re a fan of the classic game, creating mind-blowing domino installations, or writing your own story with this underlying theme, the rules of domino are simple. All you need is a set of dominoes, a flat surface to lay them out on and the will to start the chain reaction.
The first step is picking a starting domino. The most common start is with a double-six domino set from which each player draws seven tiles. A player may pass their turn if they cannot extend the chain with one of their tiles. The chain is extended as each tile placed adds a new side to the existing set, called a “bone yard.” The chain continues until one player wins or all of the players are blocked and have no legal plays left.
While Hevesh has worked on dominoes involving more than 300,000 dominoes and helped set a Guinness record for the largest domino installation, she says the key to a great domino setup is the physical phenomenon of gravity. This force pulls a knocked-over domino toward the earth, sending it crashing into the next domino and setting off a chain reaction.
Physicist Stephen Morris agrees that the principle of gravity is key. He explains that when you place a domino upright, it stores some potential energy in its position because it’s lifting against the force of gravity. As the first domino falls, most of this energy converts to kinetic energy, or energy of motion, which then transmits to the next domino in the line and gives it the push it needs to topple over. This energy travels down the entire line of dominoes until the last one falls.
In fiction writing, scene dominoes are like the individual scenes in your story. If each scene doesn’t have enough logical impact on the scene ahead of it, you might have problems with your plot. That’s why it’s a good idea for all writers to have a basic outline of their plot and use tools such as Scrivener or a story board to help them plan out their work. This helps them avoid writing scenes that don’t have enough logical impact to raise the tension in their stories.