Sometimes I find that when trying to recall a specific kanji I am able to remember the story and all the elements/primitives but then when I write the kanji I flip the elements, e.g., I put the bottom one at the top, the right side one on the left side, or vice versa.

Is this a common problem? In a classroom setting would I still get half a mark?

I can't speak for all classroom settings, but I would not give any credit for that. The placement of the elements is crucial.

I haven't written any kanji for yonks so it's hard to think of, but can you give an example of a kanji for which either side is plausibly the radical, given its meaning?

I imagine that were I to write a kanji with the parts mixed up I would notice the mistake by virtue of having now studied by recognition so extensively.

Looks like delaying writing may have been a good plan after all

累 and 細 come to mind! And I have messed up the order on the right elements of 服 the last few days.

And 山 likes to just move all over!

SellingTokyo Wrote:累 and 細 come to mind!

Both of those kanji have straightforward readings and meanings and are very common.

累 in particular just screams るい because of its similarity to 塁.

Writing 詳累 instead of 詳細 or 累工 instead of 細工? Impossible

I would be interested to see more examples.

I may have misunderstood but I believe the original poster was referring to RTK practice. We aren't learning Japanese , we are learning to write Chinese characters.

You wouldn't get credit in a classroom setting, no. But if it makes you feel better, you can give yourself a 'half-mark' in your head. It is a good sign that you're on your way to remembering the character if you have all the elements.

Some element issues will solve themselves (月,糸,亻, etc. show up frequently on the left; 宀、冖、雨、etc., show up frequently on the top,　the flattened forms of 火 and 心 show frequently at the bottom.) If you have a sense of where elements are 'expected' to be, you only need to pay special attention to the exceptions.

I had no problem usually with just failing the card a couple times and getting it right by brute force, but for persistent problem characters, I might revise the story to include elements that force position. (I used physical travel for left to right and passage of time for top to bottom as much as possible ; if all of the elements are concrete objects (tree, rock, mountain, rice, etc.) then sometimes you can simply put them in the right position in the story). That extra story-revision was only necessary for a half-dozen or so kanji, another half-dozen or so I had some throw-away mnemonic word trick on top of the core story to remind myself of positioning. The rest simply straightened themselves out after a few repetitions.

(There might have been more, but I did make that left-right/top-down rule habitual in my story creating after the first few trouble spots. If you don't have some such habit you might need more revisions.)

I was thinking about this some more, and if I were to start again I would use a different mountain for every mountain placement (maybe Fuji on the left, Kilimanjaro, Matterhorn, K2, whatever) since then the stories would be a lot more visual. And probably I should have personalized 口 and 言 (maybe someone with nice lips for the first one and someone who talks a lot for the second).

But, to your question, I would fail the card because I think that extra review, where you know the story but can just focus on drilling the placement, is going to really cement the whole thing in your head.