A domino is a small rectangular block of wood or plastic that has been marked on one face with an arrangement of dots resembling those on dice. The other face is blank or identically patterned. The identifying marks are sometimes called “pips.” A domino is usually twice as long as it is wide, but may be narrower or wider. Dominoes are often used for games of chance and skill, such as matching, block building, scoring, and drawing.

Dominoes were once widely popular as a way to circumvent religious prohibitions against playing cards. They are also useful for educational purposes, demonstrating simple mathematical concepts such as addition and subtraction. The game has also been used to help children develop their motor skills.

Hevesh, a domino artist who has gained fame through her YouTube channel, creates mind-blowing displays using hundreds of thousands of individual dominoes. Her largest setups take several nail-biting minutes to fall. She has even helped a music star set a record by creating a circular arrangement with more than 76,017 dominoes.

One of the most important lessons I share with my book editing clients is to think about every scene in their novel as a domino effect. A single domino is insignificant on its own, but it can cause an entire chain reaction. In a story, a domino can be an emotional beat that shifts the direction of the plot or a logical step in a character’s journey. When all the dominoes are arranged, they naturally influence each other to produce the desired outcome.

In order to be effective, a scene domino must have an identifiable starting point and an ending point. It must also link logically with the scenes that precede and follow it. It’s easy to overlook this linkage when we’re writing, but it’s crucial when editing a manuscript. If an editor doesn’t make sure that every scene in a novel is working together to accomplish the author’s goals, then the entire book can fall apart like a house of cards.

Stephen Morris, a Ph.D., who studies the physical behavior of dominoes, explains how dominoes can be tipped so precisely that they appear to be following an invisible predetermined path. This happens because dominoes have high centers of gravity and because each subsequent domino is bigger than the previous one. As a result, it doesn’t take much force to push a domino to its final destination.

A standard domino set contains 28 tiles, or “tiles.” A player draws seven of them from a stock, or boneyard, and then places the rest of their tiles on the table in front of them. The pips on each of the tiles indicate their value, from six down to zero (indicated by a blank). This basic structure forms the basis for most of the games played with dominoes. Other games use larger sets, including double-nine and double-12.