Domino, in its most basic form, is a small rectangular wooden block with either one or two faces. The top face of each domino bears a pattern of dots, similar to those on dice. The other face is blank or identically patterned. When a domino is tipped ever so slightly, it triggers a chain reaction that causes the rest to fall. Dominos come in a variety of sizes and shapes, and they can be used to play many different games.
The most common domino game is a race against the clock to see who can get all of their dominoes laid out first. In this game, a player plays a domino by placing it edge to edge against an existing domino or against a stack of them. Then they continue to play dominoes until their pile runs out or the game ends.
Another popular domino game is a scoring game where players take turns placing tiles on the table so that their ends touch, or “match,” each other (e.g., one’s touching one’s, or two’s touching two’s). When the exposed ends match each other in any way that is a multiple of five the player scores that number of points. Normally play continues until one player goes out, although some variations of this game allow the players to stop before that happens.
As a professional domino artist, Hevesh creates mind-blowing installations that can involve hundreds of thousands of dominoes and take several nail-biting minutes to complete. But despite the difficulty involved, she says there is no secret to creating these impressive displays: the laws of physics are all it takes.
Hevesh uses a version of the engineering-design process to create her domino works, and she often films her test versions of each section before putting them all together. The process allows her to make adjustments when something doesn’t quite work. Watch the video above to see how Hevesh creates her spectacular domino setups.
The biggest challenge in creating a successful domino layout is making sure all the pieces have the right connections, and that everything is aligned to the right direction. This is why Hevesh starts with a 3-D model before building out flat arrangements of the dominoes. She also makes test dominoes that are much smaller than the final version, so she can tweak them before putting them all together.
Writing Tip for Today
The next time you’re writing a scene, think about the domino effect. This means that any action you write can have an impact on the plot of your story in a similar way to how a single domino can set off a chain reaction.
If you are a pantser, this is especially important because pantsing can mean that you don’t always have an outline of your story in front of you. Using the analogy of the domino effect will help you ensure that every scene in your novel is a natural extension of the previous scenes and that it builds tension and suspense.
