Lessons I Learned in a Comedy Club

One Wednesday evening in 2008, I sat at a table in the back of Go Bananas Comedy club in Cincinnati, Ohio. I took notes as people in the room made suggestions to a young guy in a backwards hat on how to make his joke work better. 

“What if instead of saying you chugged a beer, you say you guzzled a Natty Ice? Specific is funnier.”

“You need to cut, like, all of the back story. I don’t need to learn about your childhood dog to understand a joke about you puking on your buddy.”

“Hmmm…I might try a rule of threes there? Like, ‘I was really drunk– I couldn’t see straight, I was slurring my words, I went out for a pack of cigarettes and left my wife…and I don’t even have a wife!’”

Even though I was already an adult woman with a job and a husband (that night, I had come directly from my job as a lawyer and was still in my ill-fitting pantsuit) and the others were, like the backwards hat guy, young dudes, I was thrilled to be in this room. I was new to stand-up and I had finally been invited to the weekly writing sessions for local comedians. Every Wednesday, before the open mic night, aspiring and working comics would bring their fresh jokes and let them be torn apart.

It was a nerve-wracking and sometimes demoralizing process, but it was in that room that I learned the fundamentals of writing good comedy. All these years later, it’s the critiques from those young dudes that I think of whether I’m drafting a new joke, planning an essay, or working on a new book. 

“Why is that funny?”

I remember feeling immediately defensive when a shaggy haired guy with glasses asked me that question about one of my jokes that was getting a laugh. But he wasn’t saying that my joke wasn’t funny, he was asking me to identify why people were laughing at a particular point in my joke. I had no idea. People laugh at punchlines for all kinds of reasons– sometimes they are surprised, they expect someone to say one thing and they say another; sometimes it’s a relief of tension, or an absurd or silly story, or a feeling of superiority.

Sometimes the laugh is because of a smart observation. Everyone says something funny every once in a while, but once I was able to identify why something was funny, then I could replicate that style of joke, employ it at a key time in a set (and also make sure I wasn’t using it so much that it became expected). 

“You gotta kill your darlings.”

I used to write these long, clever, complicated jokes. I would type them out, word-for-word, and memorize the script before performing. A comic I admired told me to print out my jokes, and with one color, I was to highlight where I was getting laughs consistently, and with another color, I should highlight only the parts that are essential to understanding the laugh lines. Everything else, I should cut. 

“But those are my favorite parts!” I complained.

“Yeah, those are your darlings. Kill them,” he told me. He was right, it made my jokes infinitely better.

When I wrote my memoir, Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail, I allowed myself to really indulge in language. When I edited my memoir, I allowed myself to feel good about letting go of those parts that I loved, but that didn’t serve the story.

“It’s just a bunch of jokes.”

This was the critique I got after practicing my very first 10 minute set. I had strung together every joke I’d ever written and was hoping to get picked to open for a headlining comedian at the comedy club (I didn’t…that time). What they meant was a joke on its own is just that, a joke; but a longer set needs to be more than a series of jokes, it needs to have substance, something to make the audience want to keep watching (a personality, a theme, a tone, a thru-line, etc). I ask myself this often in my non-stand-up writing– what is this outside of the jokes?

“You aren’t a comedian if you don’t do comedy.”

When I started stand-up, I would write and write and write and practice and practice and practice, but wouldn’t actually sign up for the open mics. Finally, someone told me that I would never get better if I didn’t “do. the. thing.” And so I did…and it was absolutely terrifying.  But performing also meant that I finally got the experience that was impossible unless I put myself out there, the thing that makes me still want to get on stage over 15 years later– making an audience laugh.

As I’m getting ready to launch my first book into the world, I’m reminded of the feeling I would have on Wednesdays, getting ready to try out my new joke, knowing that once it was out there I had no control over what people thought about it. And just like those days, I’m nervous. But I’m also excited, because at least I’m doing the thing.

—-

Sally Chaffin Brooks is a writer, stand-up comedian, and podcaster. A reformed lawyer, Sally has released two chart-topping comedy albums (Brooks Was Here, Street Bird) and co-hosts the comedy podcast The Ridiculist. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and son, and heads to the mountains as often as possible. Sally’s debut memoir, Going to Maine, comes out September 10, 2024. 

Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail

From comedian Sally Chaffin Brooks comes a memoir about the thing she can’t seem to shut up about— her life changing thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. 25-year-old Sally has no reason to upend her comfortable, conventional life to spend 5 months hiking the Appalachian Trail; no reason except that her charismatic best friend, Erin, asked her to come along. A woefully out-of-shape Sally quickly realizes she may not actually be prepared for the realities of thru-hiking— brutal weather, wrong turns, and painful blisters have her wanting to quit almost as soon as she starts. But out of loyalty to Erin, or maybe the sinking realization that her life needed upending, Sally sticks it out. As she and Erin trek from Georgia to Maine, they collect a ragtag band of hikers and together stumble from one hilarious (and sometimes scary) predicament to another. By the time she reaches Maine— accompanied by Erin, their crew, and a guy she’s maybe (definitely) falling in love with— readers will cheer for the stronger, more self-assured Sally that has emerged and wish they could start the laugh-out-loud, life-affirming adventure all over again.

BUY HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: How To and Tips