Are you struggling to find the right starting point for your play? Are you getting those frustrating first-round competition rejections confirming you didn’t get past the 10-page sift? You’re not alone.
There’s nothing more irking than the knowledge that your script was rejected based on its first ten pages. It means that the reader didn’t get to your earth-shattering revelation on page 25 that made sense of everything that came before it.
This article explains what we cover in our Top of the Stack: The First 10 Pages course, developed precisely to give your script the best chance of a full read. Ideal for experienced playwrights and beginners alike.
Ready to come on the journey? Let’s go.
The Challenge of the Opening Pages
There’s something quietly exhilarating about the opening stretch of a play, where the story reveals itself through tension and actions that feel vague yet purposeful.
There are the contradictions that eventually undo or transform your characters. And there’s an atmospheric pressure in the room — a sense that something is shifting, even if we can’t quite name it yet.
Those first ten pages carry that responsibility. They don’t simply introduce the world; they set its pulse. They tell us how to watch, how to listen, and, crucially, why we should care.
Resisting the Urge to Explain
I had a meeting with Suzanne Bell of the Royal Exchange while I was completing my MA in playwriting. And she suggested that you should know what a play is going to be about within the first three pages.
At the time, that felt like a big ask. But now it’s a challenge I savour. You have to really know your story, and that’s unlikely to come in the first draft. The key is to embed the theme without stating or explaining it. Drop in a hint like a hot prop that’s going to be significant.
In my play, The Call of Nature, there’s a birthday cake preset on the stage as the audience enters. But we quickly realise that this isn’t a birthday party. It’s a charged post-clubbing party that feels odd and dangerous. It’s revenge for something – a remembrance of an absent person who should be there, but isn’t.
Finding the Theme
I’ve always been drawn to the early territory. It’s where the writer’s hand is most exposed, where intention and instinct sit closest together.
But with so little space, you’re forced to make choices that matter.
You can’t hide behind exposition or scenic decoration; you have to trust the drama to do the work. And when you do, the play begins to breathe.
Beginning with tension rather than explanation
One of the most common impulses in early drafts is the urge to “set things up” — to orient the audience, to clarify the world, to make sure everyone understands the context before anything meaningful happens.
However, theatre rarely rewards caution. It thrives on immediacy, on the sense that we’ve stepped into a moment already in motion.
The first ten pages don’t need to explain the world; they need to activate it. In week one of Top of the Stack: The First 10 Pages, we explore the DNA of the story you want to tell, and explore the most impactful starting point.
Kickstarting Your Play with Action
Theatrical action, at its simplest, is one character doing something that affects another. That’s the current that runs beneath every line, every gesture, every silence.
When that current is present from the start, the audience leans in instinctively. When it’s absent, they wait — and waiting is the enemy of engagement.
The opening pages should feel as though the characters have arrived with purpose, carrying the residue of whatever has just happened and the anticipation of whatever must happen next.
Letting the Dramatic Question guide the early movement
In week two of the course, we explore how to embed tension into your action, by examining “The Dramatic Question“.
Every scene, no matter how small, carries a question at its centre — a question that shapes the action and gives the moment its direction. It doesn’t need to be spoken aloud, and it certainly doesn’t need to be grand, but it must be felt.
Will she tell him the truth? Will he convince her to leave? Will he influence her decision?
This is the Dramatic Question, and it’s the quiet engine of the first ten pages. It’s born from conflict — not necessarily conflict in the loud, combative sense, but in the simple friction between what one character wants and what another refuses to give.
Keeping the Audience on the Edge of their Seats
Once that question is alive, the audience follows the thread. It’s what forces the audience onto the edge of their seat.
They might not know the question, but they want to know the answer.
They’re not waiting for information; they’re waiting for consequence.
Characters who enter with intention, not obligation
A scene only truly begins when a character wants something. Not in the abstract, thematic sense, but in the immediate, human sense: to be heard, to be forgiven, to avoid humiliation, to assert control, to hide something, to reveal something, or to stop something from happening.
When characters enter a room because they have something at stake, the air changes. The scene has direction. The audience senses the pressure.
The first ten pages are where this becomes most visible. If a character walks in simply because the plot requires their presence, the moment falls flat. But if they walk in carrying desire — even a small, private one — the scene begins to move. And once it moves, it can build.
Crisis, climax, resolution as the natural rhythm of drama
Week 3 explores how to ramp up the tension and keep it going.
Writers often think of crisis and climax as structural milestones that belong near the end of an act, but in practice, they’re happening constantly.
Every great scene begins with a crisis. The character enters the stage with the intention to apply pressure, which forces a a shift that leads to a disruption. This is the rhythm of drama: pressure, change, consequence.
Bringing the Action Alive with Consequence
In the first ten pages, these movements are essential. The audience feels it when a character walks into the space with an intention.
A character hesitates, another pushes; a truth is avoided; a boundary is tested; a silence lands with more weight than expected.
These are the micro‑turns that accumulate into momentum. They don’t need to be dramatic in scale; they simply need to be alive. But if they’re in your first ten pages, the reader is more likely to read on.
Structure as clarity rather than constraint
By the time we reach the structural work in Week 4, writers have already made good headway into their first ten pages, whether they’re starting from scratch or working on a rewrite of an existing script.
You might think that there’s little need for a focus on structure so early into the script, but if you know where it’s going, you know where to start.
The structure session provides a path for the playwright beyond the first ten pages. We map out the full story, so you can continue the good work you’ve already started.
Week 5: Sharing the Work
We do plenty of work sharing through the course. However, we dedicated the final week of the 5-week programme to reading and discussing, finding what works in the mouth when the work is read out loud.
It’s a celebration of the little journey of the play, and set the writer in good stead to continue the work beyond those first ten pages.
The promise you make in the opening pages
Ultimately, the first ten pages are a promise. A promise of plot and the reassurance that the playwright is working with intention.
The first ten pages show the audience the world you’re entering. These are the people you’ll follow. This is the tension that will shape their journey.
And when that promise is clear, the reader and the audience relaxes into the story. They trust you. And once they trust you, you can take them anywhere.
The journey of discovery
The opening pages don’t need to be perfect. They need to be purposeful.
A play feels most alive if the characters are already in motion and the world is shifting. It’s most exciting if something is at stake, and while it might not be clear what it is so early in the script; the audience feel it.
Because when the first ten pages are alive, the rest of the play has room to breathe.
Join the Top of the Stack
We’ve been running playwriting courses for well over a decade, and in that time, we’ve helped hundreds of playwrights at all stages of their playwriting journey bring their ideas out of their heads and onto the page.
Find out more about our Top of the Stack courses here.
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