Domino is a game where players place dominoes edge to edge against each other in such a way that the domino’s identifying marks (the pips) match up with those of other dominoes on the table. Each domino has an identifying mark on one side and is blank or identically patterned on the other. There are a variety of ways to arrange dominoes to form straight lines, curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, walls, and 3-D structures such as towers and pyramids.
The most basic domino set contains 28 tiles. The shuffled dominoes are called the stock or boneyard. Each player picks seven dominoes from the stock to begin playing the game. If the players are using a larger domino set, the number of dominoes each player draws will be higher. For example, in a game with a double-twelve set, four players would each draw 11 tiles to start.
Normally, the first player begins play by placing his or her heaviest domino in the center of the game area. The other players then take turns picking dominoes from the stock and placing them in their hands. The player who holds the highest double leads with that domino. If no player has an opening double, the next highest domino is called — “double-six?”, “double-five?” — and so on until someone plays it.
After a player has played all of his or her dominoes, the winner is determined by adding up the numbers of each player’s remaining dominoes. If the number of pips on a player’s dominoes is less than that of his or her opponent, that player wins. If a player’s total is equal to the opponent’s, the runner-up is determined by the order in which each player placed his or her dominoes.
A player can also win the game by “chipping out.” If a player can no longer make a play, that player chips out and the winners are the partners whose combined sum of all their remaining dominoes is least.
In a 1983 study, University of British Columbia physicist Lorne Whitehead showed that the domino effect is as powerful as the pulse from a nerve cell firing a neuron. A single domino can cause a chain reaction that brings down things as large as three feet tall and weighing more than 100 pounds.
For many writers, a line of dominoes can be a metaphor for the structure of their stories. If they don’t plan their narratives well, they can end up with scenes that plod along and never seem to reach any sort of climax. A good story must have a clear beginning and end, so that the reader is able to follow the plot of the story from scene to scene. To do so, a writer must use tools like outlines and Scrivener to create a framework for their story. This way, they can keep the pace of their narrative up and avoid scenes that don’t move the story forward.