The First Page is a Lie

Writing the Emotional Roadmap of Your Play

You think it starts with the first line. The lights. The door that opens. But that’s the bait. The real beginning of your play is buried somewhere else… off to the side, in the body, in the breath between lines on page 7. Or it’s in the way a character can’t quite make eye contact in their first monologue. It’s in the thing they don’t say when the silence stretches too long and somebody coughs in the audience.

Most early drafts are doing too much on the first page. We’re auditioning… for the reader, for the director, for ourselves. Look at me! I’m clever. Look at me! I have form. Look at me! I know what I’m doing.

And hey, sometimes we do. But more often, the first page is an exercise in throat-clearing. The play hasn’t dropped into itself yet. The voice is still rehearsing.

When I work with playwrights, I often ask:

What’s the moment your play really starts telling the truth?

Because it’s not always where you planted the opening stage direction. It’s not always where the character says, “You never listen to me.” Sometimes, the play doesn't start until someone flinches.

Why do we need to know where our story begins?

For the audience…

Because if you don’t know where it really begins, the audience won’t either.
They’ll feel lost and not know why. Or worse… they’ll feel nothing.

Starting in the wrong place is like handing someone a map with no landmarks.
You’ve asked them to follow you into the woods, but you haven't told them what they're looking for.

The real beginning is your contract with the audience. It’s where you say, This is what’s at stake. This is the wound. This is the ache under everything.

And if you delay that too long…if you bury the pulse beneath clever banter and exposition…the play stays on the surface. Pretty, maybe. But forgettable.

For practitioners…

One of the hardest things for me to learn as a playwright was how to write “emotional intent” into my script. I was told for years that stage directions are the devil, that they would be “blacked out” and ignored anyway. I spent most of my life thinking of them as a necessary evil instead of what they really truly should be: the emotional road map of your play.

We are in conversation with the practitioners of our work. But all too often, it doesn’t feel like a conversation. It feels like a guessing game. Hear me: unless you want a lifetime of heartache from people misinterpreting your intentions, it is vital that your wayfinders (your stage directions, your silences, your breaths) signal not just what happens, but what hurts. What haunts. What hovers.

Actors aren’t mind readers. Directors aren’t oracles. You have to guide them through the emotional architecture of your piece. That’s your job. Not to control every movement, but to locate the internal geography. The soft terrain where fear and desire intersect. And sketch enough of it on the page that the team knows where to dig.

Psychological Staging

Psychological staging is when you block a scene based on what the character is feeling, not just what they’re doing. It’s about showing the inner life…grief, shame, tension, desire…through movement, space, silence, and physical behavior.

It’s why a character stands near the door instead of sitting. Why someone won’t make eye contact. Why they fold a napkin for too long instead of answering a question.

You’re not just staging the scene. You’re staging the psyche.

Where is the shame in this scene? Where is the deflection? Where is the private memory hiding behind the public smile? These things live in the body. In the air between lines. In which way a chair is turned. In how long someone stares at the floor before speaking.

Your stage directions don’t have to be long. But they should be alive. Alive with intent, with ache, with the heat map of what your characters are not saying.

So yes, find your real page one. But then: mark the path. Leave breadcrumbs. Don’t just write the what. Write the why. Because a great play doesn’t start with plot. It starts with pressure. With presence. With pulse.

And your job is to make sure we feel it.

Examples of Psychological Staging

Stage Direction

• BERNIE smiles with her mouth. Her eyes stay on the makeup mirror.

• But EVIE doesn’t move toward the purse. She brushes dust from the windowsill instead.

• SHE shifts her weight and adjusts a wedding ring that isn’t there anymore.

Parentheticals

We’re often taught to use adverbs in our parentheticals—but they can get lost in translation. Unless they’re very specific, they tend to lose the full emotional weight of the moment. And that’s one of the trickiest tasks we face as playwrights: How do we convey something so precise without sounding like we’re dictating? Here are some examples of how to do that with clarity and nuance:

• (dismissively) - pretending not to care

• (quietly) or (haltingly) - grateful but can’t say it

• (fragilely) or (unsteadily) - trying not to cry

• (wryly) or (dryly) - saying it like a joke, but it’s not

• (carefully) or (provocatively) - testing a boundary

• (flatly) or (too quickly) - lying

• (briskly) or (overbrightly) - ashamed, but pretending not to be

• (tenderly) or (hesitantly) - wants to say I love you

• (distantly) - lost in the memory

• (searchingly) - checking if they’re still listening

Beats/Pauses/Silence

In playwriting, a beat marks a subtle emotional shift, a pause signals a hesitation or rising tension, and a silence creates a charged absence where language fails and feeling takes over.

• MARGOT: He asked about you, you know.

  (beat)

  DANIEL: What’d you say?

• LILA
  Did you tell them the truth?

  (pause)

  MAYA
  I told them what they needed to hear.

• BEN
  You okay?

  (silence)

  TESS
  (still looking out the window)
  Yeah.

• Euba kneels to gather the shredded letter. She holds the pieces in her hand a moment, then lights them. As they burn she tosses the scraps into the can. Then she sits. Quiet. Staring out at the lonely highway. Euba feels a bit better. Fin, on the other hand, is gutted. Now the lonely highway beckons their attention. A car swooshes by, almost mocking them. Euba sits in disgust at herself. Silence.

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Audrey Cefaly's plays (Alabaster, Maytag Virgin, The Gulf, The Last Wide Open, Trouble) have garnered the Lammy Award, the Calicchio Prize, the NNPN Goldman Prize, the Edgerton, and a Pulitzer nomination. Her works have been produced at Signature Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Barter Theatre, Merrimack Rep, Florida Studio, Florida Rep, Gulfshore Playhouse, and countless others. Cefaly is a Dramatist Guild Foundation "Traveling Master," an Arena Stage playwright cohort, and a recipient of the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. She is published by Concord Theatricals, Applause Books, Smith & Kraus and TRW.