Just wanted some input on this. Lately I've been linking stories if kanji have the same particles, and sticking with the keyword rather than Heisig's often weird alternative (ie Dog/Chihuahua?). Any opinions on this - good/bad?

For example, my story for King (Frame 255) is "The King liked to fly his tie-fighter sideways" (because it looks like a tie-fighter, from Star Wars, flying sideways).

The next frame was for Jewel, so my story is "Unfortunately the king dropped a precious jewel when he flew sideways".

Then when Lord gets introduced in Frame 266, the King was back in the story as such "A Lord is a drop of what a King is".

Also in addition to this I normally structure my stories in the order of writing, so particles that appear to the left are in the story first, then the one on the right, or above first before the one below, as the case may be.

As an example:

(L-R)
Frame 260 "Lunatic": A pack of wild dogs chased the lunatic King Lear after his fall from grace. (Wild Dog particle is on the left, with the image they are chasing across the character, King particle on the right = forms Lunatic)

The story itself doesn't quite make sense, as King Lear didn't get chased by wild dogs, but they were a common feature in Shakespeare, and King Lear was definitely the most lunatic of all his characters!

(Top-Bottom)
Frame 262 "Display": His *mouth* was so big the *king* looked small under it, what a display! (Mouth particle on top, hence emphasis on the King looking small under the mouth = Display)

That's a very good idea if it works for you. For me, that would make it so I'd have to remember all the kanji just to remember one. You should also make the locations where all these imagined events happen clear.

[Katsuo]

By "particles" I presume you mean "primitives" (i.e. Heisig's word for the parts of kanji).

Heisig's weird alternatives are designed to make memorizing easier. For example the keyword for 大 is "large", which is abstract. In general concrete things are easier to memorize, so Heisig thought up an alternative word.

He presumably noticed that 大 is similar in form to 犬, "dog", so to give them distinct physical forms he called 大 large dog, e.g. a "St. Bernard" and 犬 a small dog, i.e. "chihuahua".

Changing primitive names like this makes the task of remembering the kanji much easier. If one of Heisig's ideas doesn't work well for you, then by all means think up your own. It's usually best to link your idea to the original (e.g. for "king" use "King Lear" or "Henry VIII"). You also need to carefully check the indexes so that you don't choose a word that will be used later in the book.

Sevenhelmets Wrote:Lately I've been linking stories

In your example, I don't think the stories themselves are linked. What you've done is come up with an alternative primitive name for "king", i.e. "king flying a tie-fighter". When learning future kanji containing 王 you could use whichever fits best for that particular story.

Quote:I normally structure my stories in the order of writing

I think that's a good idea in most cases. Occasionally it can make the story rather clumsy, so some other techniques are useful too.

Katsuo Wrote:By "particles" I presume you mean "primitives" (i.e. Heisig's word for the parts of kanji).

Ops, yes, that's exactly what I meant.

Thanks for the comments, it's good advice. I don't want to get to frame 1,192 only to find that I've memorized a primitive a certain way which will make things difficult to memorize the future ones.....!