One thing I have noticed is that a lot of stories seem to be the wrong way round. Heisig says you should remember the kanji from the key word and not the other way around. So to my mind you need to start with the key word, that triggers a story and out of that story the various bits of the kanji come out. But a lot of the stories on the site seem to have a story where the key word is the last item in them. Isn't that the wrong way round or does it not matter?

Ideally, a logical order would be best. However, sometimes it can be a bit challenging. You'll find that out very soon, after making a few of your own stories.

Whenever I am not pleased with the choice of stories, I write my own. I usually try to think of my own story first, and I glance at the choices on this site. If the stories nearly match, or I find a better one, I just add it to my collection. If I find problems with the stories, or I believe my idea is better in some way, I add it to the site. There will always be room for improvement.

I came to the exact same conclusion when I was in the 700-900 range and decided to use simple, straight to the point stories with the keyword often being the first word because of that and it did work for a while. But then I started forgetting some of them and decided to try making more elaborate stories where the keyword doesn't have a fixed spot and it worked better. Looking at your profile(If you are in fact Rusty from the main website) I can see you're almost in the same spot I was when I first came to this conclusion. I won't tell you what to do since this approach might work out better for you, just giving my two cents since I was pretty much in the same situation.

I never used anything that could be described as a 'story', just visual images/scenes.

I used any lame trick to get from the keyword to parts of the image, and thence to the rest of it, in a kind of 'i+1' process for each image - i.e. building a general context to act as a cue for a more specific one.

For example: particularly -> partickly -> tickly -> image of a bright red comedy skeleton being tickled -> bones + vermillion. This was before the 'skeleton' primitive was introduced, but this kanji was secure enough by then for it not to matter.

Another example: lament -> "lamentations of their women" (from Conan) -> image of Conan sitting on Dr Freud's couch, bleating about his problems -> state of mind + eminent. The keyword 'lament' only reminds me of Conan, but that's enough to cue the rest. I had not (and have not) used Conan for anything else, so associating him with 'eminent' has not caused problems, though it's a shame to waste such a vivid character on just one kanji

These worked for me largely because they are the first thing I thought of, so they are easy to 'reinvent' upon seeing the keyword.

I recently failed on 'dispatch', because there are quite a few 'sending away on the road' images, and I got it mixed up with another recently-learned one. This is by far the most common mistake I make. The fix was easy:

dispatch -> spatula! The annoying guy from the Go Compare ads (maestro) now gets smacked around with a spatula while having his baton taken away and being given a purse & sent on his way. Remembering that the spatula itself doesn't appear in the kanji is a trivial detail. Hopefully that will fix it for the next review, though I guess typing it up here pretty much guarantees that

Also IMHO, any mnemonics that need writing down are not worth writing down. I wrote literally nothing for any of them.

Something I didn't take seriously at first, but later came to appreciate, was Heisig's advice not to fuss about the relative positions of the primitives in the kanji. In 99% of cases, the relative positions are obvious, and when they're not, amending the image is a small detail once all the elements are there.

HTH

All of this makes good sense. I think I am going to try to get the order from the key word to the elements of the kanji but if there is a really good story then that is the most important thing.