by When you think of domino, you probably imagine a line of dominoes, set up in a straight or curved row, and then tipped so that when the first one falls, the rest fall with it in a sequence. That’s the “domino effect,” and it can apply to literally anything that follows from something else, such as a series of events or a chain reaction.
Domino is a type of table game in which players take turns placing tiles (also called dominoes) edge to edge against each other. The tiles have identifying marks on one side, called pips, and blank or identically patterned on the other. The goal is to make a line of adjacent matched tiles, or “pips”, without the leftmost tile becoming the target of another player’s move. A typical domino set contains 28 pieces, although some sets have longer ones.
In the mid-18th century, dominoes were introduced to the West from Italy and France. By the early 20th century, they had become very popular in the United States and Great Britain, where many games were developed using them. Domino is generally considered to be the ancestor of all modern table games of chance, including poker and backgammon.
The word “domino” is derived from the Latin dominus, a contraction of domina (“lord”). It also may have roots in the Arabic domir (“throwing” or “sliding”) and the Persian dommar (“flipping over”). Dominoes are made of various materials, but the most commonly used are polymer clay, pressed wood, and ivory or bone. They can have either a smooth or corrugated surface and can be colored, painted, or glazed.
When a writer uses the term domino in their writing, it usually refers to an action that has a knock-on effect, where the next scene is determined by what happens before it. In fiction, it’s often a plot beat that determines the end of the story or the fate of the main character. In nonfiction, it can be a paragraph that illustrates a point or an argument.
We’ve all seen videos of someone setting up a domino construction and then tipping the first domino ever-so-gently, watching as it causes a series of dominoes to fall in a rhythmic, exciting sequence. What’s cool about these constructions is that each individual domino is insignificant on its own, but the entire sequence has a powerful effect.
When it comes to writing, I try to teach my clients that every scene in a novel is like a domino. Each scene is insignificant by itself, but when you put them all together, they have a powerful impact on the next scene. And when that domino is a major, plot-shattering event, it can have a huge impact on the whole novel.
