Good evening,

I started RTK1 last weekend and so far have been doing pretty well I think. However, I noticed that often do not need a story to remember a kanji.
To be precise, I do make one, but with half or so of the kanji I've done so far (not many, I'm up to ~110 now) when I review a keyword, I find myself writing the kanji down before the story around it even has a chance to pop into my head.
I was wondering if this is a good (or normal, as I'm still at the easy part) thing, or that it will get me into trouble later on with the more complex kanji.

Thank you.

Most of the first 100 or so kanji are fairly simple, so the stories soon become obsolete. But I think you will find that this thing starts to happen less as you go on studying.

Anyway, I think that's a good thing, as long as you remember the story (even if it's after the actual kanji). You will need it for later, when you have a lot more kanji in your stacks.

Also, you may find as you go on that the kanji that you remember "without" invoking your story are the ones you most easily forget upon your third, fourth, and fifth reviews. This is because it's using your short-term visual memory (relatively weak) as opposed to your "imaginative," visual memory (much longer-lasting) in order to pass your early reviews.

The eventual goal, of course, is to shift all the kanji into your "long-term visual memory," which is the most permanent place you can possibly put it ... it might seem easy with characters like "one," "day," and "bright" to just write the character a couple of times, and just basically try to memorize what it looks like ... but once you start in on your 300th - 500th kanji, you'll notice that with most of them, the only ones you have a prayer of a chance remembering three days out are the ones you fixed a good mnemonic in your mind for.

So, yeah ... the simpler the kanji, the less efficient Heisig's mnemonics seem to be. I'd recommend going through the process anyway, for practice. You'll need it.

Good luck!