Whether you compose your novel off the cuff or carefully outline each scene, your plot comes down to one simple question: What happens next? Thinking about the domino effect can help you answer that question in a compelling way.
A domino is a single tile that sits on top of a line of other tiles and can cause them to all fall over. You’ve probably seen domino rallies where, after tipping the first domino ever-so-slightly, all the others fall in a beautiful cascade of rhythmic motion. This type of cascade is known as a “domino effect.”
The term domino is used for many different types of games, from simple block-and-draw games for two players to complex multi-player games in which the order in which the pieces are played matters. The most common domino game in the United States involves drawing a number of dominoes, then setting them up on a table so that the longest side of each piece is facing up. The pieces are then arranged so that they can be knocked over, with the goal being to get all of the tiles down before someone else does.
Most domino sets are made of plastic or wood, but some are created from other natural materials, such as bone (usually with a silver lip ocean pearl oyster shell, also called mother of pearl or MOP), ivory, and dark hardwoods like ebony. These set often have a more unique appearance and are much heavier in weight than polymer dominoes. Some even include a variety of pips in different colors.
Historically, the word domino has had several meanings. In English, it’s most closely associated with the game, but it also denoted a long hooded cloak worn together with a mask at a carnival festival or masquerade and, in French, it referred to the cape that a priest wears over his white surplice.
Hevesh creates domino setups for movies, television shows, and events such as the album launch of a pop star. Her largest installations can take several nail-biting minutes to complete. Hevesh uses a version of the engineering-design process when she’s creating her mind-blowing domino setups, and she tests each section individually before moving on to the larger displays.
Hevesh finds that a small nudge is usually enough to get a domino to start falling. The energy from the domino that tips over converts to kinetic energy, and that energy is transmitted to the next domino. It then pushes that domino over, and so on. This chain reaction continues until the last domino falls. When you think about it, the world is a series of domino effects. Everything that happens in our lives and the world around us is a result of other events, actions, and interactions. When you consider these chain reactions, the possibilities are endless.