Domino is a small rectangular block of wood or plastic with a blank or identically patterned face on one side and an arrangement of dots, called “pips,” resembling those on dice on the other. It is used to play games in which the objective is to arrange adjacent dominoes so that the sum of the number of pips on each end of a domino is divisible by five or three. The most common set has 28 dominoes, but it can be extended to larger sets that contain more than 28, by adding additional tiles with different numbers of pips on each end.
Often, the domino effect is used as a metaphor for a chain reaction or cascade that results from one event impacting another. It can also refer to a plan or scheme of action that depends on a series of events to unfold.
The word is used in both fiction and nonfiction. For example, in a political context, dominoes can be a metaphor for legislative process or how a change in one area can influence others. A domino show, for example, is a competition where builders of domino chains try to build the most elaborate and imaginative creations before an audience of fans.
There are many different kinds of domino games. Some involve blocking the opponent or scoring points by putting up matching pairs of dominoes. Other games involve placing dominoes on a grid to form a pattern and then counting how many matching pieces are in each row and column. Some games are played in teams.
Dominoes can also be used to play memory or concentration games, in which the goal is to match a pair of dominoes with the same number of pip symbols on each face, and then recall the order in which they were placed. Some domino games are variants of card games, and some were devised to circumvent religious prohibitions against playing cards.
For many people, the most fascinating domino games are those that involve complex sequences and intricate designs that can be built and toppled with just a nudge of one. These are sometimes performed in domino shows, where competitors attempt to set up the most complicated sequences of dominoes and then have them all fall with just a slight movement of one.
As a writing technique, the idea of using dominoes to illustrate scene structure is very useful. In the same way that a domino chain is created by simply laying down one tile after another, each scene in a novel can be thought of as a scene domino, with each scene having a natural impact on the scene that comes next. It is important for writers to think of each scene in a story in this way. It can help them weed out scenes that don’t fit in with the rest of the story or that don’t have enough of a logical impact on what came before it. In this way, a writer can create a compelling and satisfying story.