I've noticed that I seem to have more of a problem remembering stories than I do remembering visuals - yet I find it easier to come up with stories. Also, certain primitives are associated (at least by Heisig) with concepts and not concrete visuals. I realize I can change that, but I'm not sure if I should still know the Heisig connection or at least pick a close visual.

I think that's one of the reasons I found the Alyks's method gave me a higher success rate, but I found it too time consuming and slow to add things to it.

I'll give you some examples.

I find LAUNDRY became easy once I pictured the laundry room in my apartment with two brooms on the two machines and a turkey sitting in the middle. I automatically remember the water primitive, so I didn't feel the need to add it. When I used some story, I found it difficult and I kept forgetting it. I haven't forgotten it since I connected the visual.

But there's a lot of primitives that don't give me a visual. Would you recommend changing those to different primitives, and should I try to keep it close to the original meaning, or does it matter?

I'm using Anki - going slower than I would like, but still making progress. At about 600+ and getting about 87% on Mature and 71% on Young.

Some visuals stick better than others, too. Often the stories/visuals that work best for me are ones associated with something that springs to mind very easily with the english keyword already. For instance, some words almost immediately evoke a thought or association in English. Since that association very naturally comes up, if you can tie your story around that association, that story will probably stick very quickly. The more I have to reach for a narrative when I see the keyword, the less likely I am to remember it.

I also find that increasingly I have to avoid using certain words in my stories, since those words have their own kanji. That's another downside to stories vs. visuals. Often, I may get the story right, but write the wrong kanji because I assumed incorrectly that certain keywords in the story made up the character. Words like "Going," "Can," and "Sit" can easily find themselves in many stories, even though their kanji should not be there. Also, if a word you've used in some stories later on appears as its own keyword, you'll probably be in a world of hurt untying the associations. So yeah, visuals over story if you can.

Yeah. I find it toughest on conceptual words like "Grace" or something. Usually I just have a story for those - although sometimes on simple kanji, the character just springs to mind and I only have a vague story. Might hurt me later on, but as long as my Mature rating stays over about 80%, I figure I'm fine.