When Lily Hevesh was a child, her grandparents gave her a classic 28-piece set of dominoes. She loved setting them up in straight or curved lines, and then flicking one domino over, which caused the next domino to tip and the others after that—a chain reaction known as the domino effect. As Hevesh got older, she started posting videos of her domino constructions on YouTube and became a professional domino artist. She has created domino sets for movies, TV shows, and events such as a Katy Perry album launch.
Dominoes are small rectangular blocks made of wood or plastic, with a trough in the middle that allows them to be stacked side by side. Each domino has a value printed on its top and sides, usually in the form of a series of dots called pips. The number of pips on a domino determines its rank, or value. A domino with a value of six pips is considered heaviest, while one with no pips is the lightest.
While dominoes are primarily used for games, they can also be placed in more sophisticated arrangements that allow for many more complex moves. Hevesh’s most intricate creations consist of multiple layers of dominoes arranged in circular or rectangular patterns. Some of these structures can contain up to 300,000 dominoes and take several nail-biting minutes to fall.
Although Hevesh’s constructions depend on physics, she says one physical phenomenon is essential to making them work: gravity. When Hevesh flicks a domino, she creates friction between the upper and lower parts of the domino by pushing against the trough. This friction releases energy, which enables the domino to slip past its tipping point and fall over.
If you think of your novel’s plot in terms of the domino effect, it might help to weed out unnecessary or repetitive scenes. For example, if your protagonist uncovers an important clue in the first scene, but in the following scene she fails to act on it, something is wrong with the plot. Similarly, if your villain wins a battle in the first scene but loses it in the following one, you have a problem. Whether you’re a pantser who writes off the cuff or a plotter who uses an outline program such as Scrivener, examining the influence of the domino effect will help you make sure that each scene has enough logical impact on the one before it. And that, in turn, will ensure your reader will want to keep turning the pages.