The Domino Effect in Writing and Filmmaking

Domino is a tile-based game that has been played for centuries. It involves placing dominoes in a row and knocking them over one by one. This is a popular pastime among children and adults. Many people also use dominoes to make designs, such as lines of circles and crosses.

Dominoes are flat, thumb-sized rectangular blocks with either a blank side or bearing from one to six pips (dots): 28 such pieces form a complete set. They are normally twice as long as they are wide. The values of the dots are used to determine the rank or “weight” of a domino. A domino with more pips is higher ranked than one with fewer pips.

The word “domino” has come to mean any occurrence that sets off a chain of events, leading eventually to a particular result. For example, a car accident that leads to an oil spill may affect other cars and then the environment as well. A change in leadership at a company may trigger an entire chain reaction of changes within the business that lead to a new result.

Lily Hevesh loved playing with her grandparents’ classic 28-piece domino set when she was a kid. She liked to line up the dominoes in straight or curved rows and flick them so that the entire row would fall. Today, she’s a professional domino artist and YouTube personality who creates elaborate setups for movies and events.

When creating a novel, the process of plotting often comes down to one question: What happens next? Consider the domino effect when planning out the action of your story. It’s a useful way to ensure that you cover all the bases and prevent gaps in your plot.

While it’s important to strive for originality as a writer, musician or filmmaker, it’s equally valuable to know when to incorporate elements of other works into your own creations. This is a concept captured in the catchphrase used on talent shows such as American Idol: “making it your own.”

A domino can be played by two or more players, and there are a number of different games that can be played with them. Some are positional, where each player in turn places a domino edge-to-edge against another so that it forms a chain of dots that increases in length. In other games, the player places a domino so that it matches an opponent’s previous play or some specified total.

While many of the earliest dominoes were made from clay, later sets were produced in various natural materials such as bone, silver lip ocean pearl oyster shell (mother-of-pearl), ivory, or dark woods like ebony. The most prestigious domino sets are made from these materials because they are more durable and attractive, and they can be quite expensive. More recently, dominoes have been made of polymer materials such as acrylic and melamine. However, there are still some sets available that are made from traditional natural materials, and they offer a more unique look and feel to the game.