Domino – A Game of Skill and Strategy
Domino is a game of skill and strategy that can be played by two or more people. It consists of small rectangular pieces called dominoes, sometimes also referred to as bones, cards, men, tiles or spinners. They are normally made of a material such as wood, bone or ivory and are about twice as long as they are wide, making them easy to stack together. Each domino has one or more spots, referred to as pips, which are used to indicate its value. The most common set of dominoes consists of 28 pieces: seven doubles (same number on both ends from double blank to double six) and 21 singles (different numbers on each end or a number and a blank).
A domino has the potential to knock over many other pieces, so we tend to think of it as a kind of chain reaction. In fact, if a domino has enough force applied to it, it can actually knock over something about three-and-a-half times its size. University of British Columbia physicist Lorne Whitehead demonstrated this in 1983.
The most basic domino games are block and scoring, but countless variations of play exist. Some games have different objectives, such as forming particular shapes with the pieces or trying to get rid of all of your tiles first. Other games use the pieces to build structures or create patterns, such as a train track or a pyramid. You can even find domino art, which is a form of visual art made using the pieces to create shapes or figures such as trains, houses and landscapes.
While some people like to arrange the dominoes in a line and then knock them down, others enjoy building intricate domino art. They may draw a design on a piece of paper and then place the dominoes in that layout, making sure each one is positioned exactly where it should be. This kind of domino art can be as simple or elaborate as the artist wishes and can include straight lines, curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, stacked walls and 3D structures such as towers and pyramids.
The ability of a domino to knock over many other pieces of the same type is one of its most distinctive features. The same can be said of the way in which a well-constructed story develops and flows, with all the scene dominoes falling one after another in a smooth action that leads up to the big climax. Whether you write your novel off the cuff or plan out every detail of it in advance, understanding how to apply this concept of the domino effect will help you to create an effective and compelling story.