How Domino Can Help Your Novel Rise to the Top

Domino is a word that is often associated with a chain reaction – one thing knocking over another. This idea is a great metaphor for narrative, particularly when it comes to plotting a novel. Whether you’re a pantser who writes by the seat of your pants or prefers to use an outline program like Scrivener, knowing how to use the domino effect can help your story rise to the top.

Traditionally, domino is played with tiles that have numbers on them. The players compete to place their pieces in a row so that their total score adds up to a specific number. The goal is to get the last piece in the row to rest on top of a previous domino. The first player to reach this milestone wins the game. Many variations on the game exist, including blocker games where all the pieces are placed side by side, and scoring games where only certain combinations of dominoes can win.

Hevesh, a domino artist with more than 2 million YouTube subscribers, creates mind-blowing setups that take several nail-biting minutes to fall. She follows a version of the engineering-design process when creating her arrangements, starting with a theme or purpose and brainstorming images or words that might be used. She then calculates the amount of dominoes she will need and determines how they will be arranged. She can create straight lines, curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, stacked walls, or even 3D structures like pyramids.

When Hevesh is done with her design, the process of putting it into motion begins. Each domino has inertia, which means it resists motion unless there is an outside force pushing or pulling on it. A small nudge is all it takes to break that inertia and set the first domino in motion. That domino then passes its potential energy onto the next one, which gets a push to knock it over. Then the next domino, and the next one, and the next – until all the dominoes have fallen.

Domino’s success also relies on technology, with a large portion of their headquarters workers working in software analytics. In addition, they are always looking for new ways to serve customers quickly and efficiently. They’re currently experimenting with allowing customers to order pizza by texting an emoji or using devices like Amazon Echo.

As a member of the X-Men, Domino has superhuman luck powers that allow her to subliminally and psionically initiate random telekinetic acts that affect probability in her favor. She is able to influence the outcome of events, from making it impossible for an enemy to hit her with a bullet to causing lightning to strike two sentinels during a battle with Vanisher. However, Domino’s powers are not always reliable, as demonstrated when her luck failed to save her from a gunshot in Civil War:X-men#1. Moreover, she is only able to activate her luck power when she is actively engaged in a dangerous situation.