Domino is a game in which players take turns drawing dominoes from a stock, called the boneyard, and then laying them down on their side of a domino board. Each domino has a number, either one to six pips (or dots) or blank, on its face. When a domino falls, it triggers a chain reaction in which the other pieces are moved and the process continues.
Domino was first introduced in France shortly after 1750. The word domino combines elements of the Latin word dominum (“dominant”) and the French term for “pile,” or stack, in reference to the many layers of the piece. Earlier, in English and French, the word referred to a long hooded cloak with a mask worn at carnival season or at masquerades.
When Lily Hevesh, 20, sets up a huge Domino display—in some cases, more than a million dominoes—she has to consider not only how it will look but how the individual parts will interact with each other. To ensure that her 3-D structures work as they should, Hevesh builds each section individually first. Her flat arrangements are next, followed by the lines of dominoes that connect the sections together. Each time she tests a new configuration, she films it in slow motion and makes precise corrections as needed.
Once the entire domino display is in place, Hevesh nudges the starting point of the chain reaction with a finger to get it rolling. She also checks each of the resulting scenes to see if they logically connect and build on the previous scene. If the final scene doesn’t raise the stakes enough or if the character’s emotional beats don’t shift as they should, that’s a problem.
Whether you write your novel on a computer using Scrivener or by hand with an outline, you probably have some sort of system in place to weed out scenes that don’t fit. Like dominoes, these scenes might be in the right position to tip over a bigger story, but they’re off track or missing a piece that will connect them to the scene that comes before it.
Thinking of each of your scenes as a domino can help you get more out of the creative process, and it’s an effective technique to apply when working with clients. Whether you’re editing a thriller about a car crash or a romance about a trip to the zoo, you can use the Domino Theory to make sure that every plot beat has enough momentum to carry the reader to the next chapter.