A Must-Have Speech Hack for Comedians
Better Than A Callback (Comedy Mindhacks #55)
Most comedians understand callbacks. If you’re not a comedian or one who’s not yet familiar with the concept, here’s what it is: later in their set, a comedian references an earlier joke they made. Typically, the audience laughs in recognition, and the comedian moves on. Job done. But there’s a similar-yet-different rhetorical device that’s a bit more powerful, namely, the denouement.
This is a fun French term that has the connotation of “the solution of a mystery, the winding up of a plot.” I spent years as a lecturer, public speaker, and preacher before ever bringing my skills or experience to the comedy stage. The denouement though, has always been a feature in my sermons and lectures. Always. When I started doing stand-up, I realized comedians had a different name for something similar, which is what I mentioned above, the callback. The problem is, a callback and denouement are not the same thing.
A callback, as I said at the start, reactivates a shared memory between a comedian and the audience. It’s a recognition laugh. When I use it, I’m rewarding people for paying attention. The audience thinks, “Hey, I remember that from earlier.” They often kinda feel included in something like an inside joke. It’s an awesome rhetorical device.
Whereas a callback creates that loop of familiarity, a denouement recontextualizes the entire journey. Another way to put it: one reminds while the other reinterprets. When a denouement lands, the audience experiences something different. They suddenly see how the data points at the beginning, and perhaps throughout the set, line up. The breadcrumbs I dropped throughout the set form a pattern they didn’t know they were watching. This, then, becomes a sort of ah-ha moment for them.
What’s really cool is the audience feels clever because they feel like they’ve solved a riddle or, as the definition implies, a mystery. When I’ve done this well, I’ve essentially made them work just enough to feel smart when the pieces click together. That feeling is much more powerful than a simple recognition laugh.
I plan the denouement from the start of building a set. This allows me to drop breadcrumbs along the way. The breadcrumbs aren’t obvious enough for the audience to realize they form a larger thread. They’re collecting pieces without knowing it. Then, at the end, the denouement reveals the pattern. It’s like the come-down after the laugh storm, the moment where the audience feels something larger about what just happened. The emotional arc ends and the journey makes sense.
A callback can be part of a denouement. But the callback alone doesn’t provide that sense of resolution. For the denouement to work, I need to tie the beginning, middle, and end together in a way that reframes everything that came before the end. It reveals cleverness and creativity and best of all, it puts a nice bow on things (which is a little ironic since the term little means “untie”).
The denouement is commonly overlooked in comedy. Comedians focus on getting laughs throughout the set. They nail the callbacks. But they miss the opportunity to make the audience feel like the entire performance was building toward something meaningful. That’s the difference between a good set and one people remember days later. So, next time you’re writing, building a set, or performing, keep this tactic in mind. If you do it well, it can have a huge payoff!
INSTAGRAM: Friends, I’m trying to grow my Instagram presence. It would mean a lot to me if you could follow me HERE. Thanks.
JOKE WRITING COURSE: By the way, if you have any interest at all in learning about your persona, how to write some jokes, or doing stand-up comedy, check out my online joke writing course, “The Joke Writer’s Lab,” HERE.