I'm not sure if the thread is still relevant anymore, but I didn't think it necessary to make a new thread for this:

I find myself recently (as i finish up RtK....as opposed to beginning) that it definitely helps me out if I can actually draw a picture out of the kanji. Of course, it has to fit with the story in itself.

This is the one I just drew for Belong 属:

[WARNING: violent story] Two teams of #insects# are playing “capture the #flag#” (ala Unreal Tournament). All of them wear ammunition #belts#. Here you try to take the #flag# of the opponent team, when you are faced by an #insect#: “You’ll get our #flag# over my dead body!”. You reply: “All your base are BELONG to us!”, shoot him on the head, take the #flag# and run away. See the #drop# of blood flowing from his head?
story: Transtic

Notice how it retains the general shape of the kanji, as well as blends in perfectly with the story. There's a few other pictures I've drawn, but this is one I like in particular.


ps: i don't claim to be a good artist or have good handwriting, especially in my own personal notes....

This is excellent. You have really made a nice pictograph of the the insect standing under a flag. I doubt you will ever forget this kanji now.

mafried Wrote:

strugglebunny Wrote:Of course. I'm just wondering if imaginative memory is all its cracked up to be with so many people using bare bone stories. I mean, I try to rely on images as much as possible, but I admittedly have a memory that's probably worse than the average person.

Maybe we don't actually use bare bone stories, but rather we use a full imaginative story and just post the bare bone outline of it to inspire others.

I agree. Sometimes I have a strong imaginative image, but I write it down in only a few words. Trying to share any more than the bare bones seems firstly rather difficult to do (since it's not a verbal story in the first place); and secondly not very useful because different people's brains form different imaginative images from the same idea.

Awesome. I'll remember that forever.

thanks for the story asriel, i'll never forget it

Well done. That piece of art's mighty memoriable.

I'd say that the single most important thing in boosting my retention rates (currently between 90-95% according to my Anki statistics) is connecting the story with the keyword in such a way that the keyword acts as a memory "trigger." That is to say, there is something about the keyword itself that invokes the story, to which I can then assemble the primitives to make the target kanji.

Using this technique really helps me with abstract words; off-hand, take the keyword "exist". My personal connotation is the scene from Star Wars, when Uncle Owen talks about Ben Kenobi, saying "I don't think he exists anymore." Because the word "exist" automatically makes me think of this scene, I used it as a trigger for my story, which you can read on the study section, or below:

exist: 在
Owen Lars, on the subject of Obi-Wan Kenobi: "I don't think he exists anymore." In fact, Obi-Wan is really Ben Kenobi, who exists in his dusty house like a genie in a bottle, covered with dirt, which Luke Skywalker opens up when he goes to visit. Once receiving the lightsaber and learning about the existence of the Force, Luke can't put the genie back into the bottle, and so he leaves that dirty dust-planet.

Something else I do in my stories is to repeat the elements several times in the same story, so that I can remember which elements actually occur in the kanji itself. Previously, I avoided using words in my stories that were the same as other kanji keywords; but doing this weakened the visual imagery of the story, and I couldn't remember it as well. That said, usually the final sentence of my story is a simple grouping of all the elements within, arranged in a way that helps with the writing. In the above example, it's "Once receiving the lightsaber and learning about the existence of the Force, Luke can't put the genie back into the bottle, and so he leaves that dirty dust-planet." But I still need the "guts" of the story too, to make the visuals vivid.

So I guess I'm using a combination of different techniques, but I have a strategy. In later stories, I sometimes use "jedi" for the 人 kanji, even using Luke Skywalker as the personalization, but I don't get confused in "exist", because Luke isn't the main thrust of the story; it's more of "putting the genie back into the bottle" and all the "dirt" of Tattooine, and that's why I repeat the elements several times in the story.

Occasionally the most popular stories in the study section connect directly with my personal connotations, so I barely have to change the given story to fit my purpose. After reviewing, if the cards are giving me trouble (constant trouble recalling the story through the keyword), I figure that my trigger isn't strong enough, so I "mark" the card, fail it, and then rewrite the story the next time I'm at my computer.

The first thing I do when I open Anki on my computer is to review my "marked" cards and tune up the stories, strengthening the triggers. I might write the kanji too, on graph paper, speaking the primitives and how they connect. Even to this day, I think in my mind "the flowers are guarded all day by the St. Bernard" when I write the "grave" kanji.

So my advice: make strong triggers

Here is a list of some of my stories on this site that use my techniques of having strong "triggers". I posted them very recently, so they will likely appear as the first stories on each page. I'd say I'm most proud of "chrysanthemum", "humanity", "core", and "lean".

excellent
gods
celebrate
disclose
diameter
indications
chrysanthemum
core
request
ball
spy
humanity
wound
lean
occupation

One more thing I'd like to add: it seems there are about three phases of kanji recall. The first one is where you are recalling and re-visualizing your story, when you are presented with the keyword. This phase occurs when mostly the card is still young, and the vivid story is important. The story functions like training wheels, or a personal trainer (checking your form while you exercise, etc).

The second phase occurs when you have a deal of familiarity with the keyword, and you find yourself just repeating the primitives in your mind in an abbreviated form of the story... usually when cards have matured.

Eventually, in the third phase, the entire kanji just pops into your mind visually when you see the keyword. You don't even need to recite anything mentally, because the kanji just appears instantly in your mind's eye. You get to this point through SRS review, and once you arrive, you'll be easily able to pick out those kanji when you see them in Japan or wherever you read Japanese.

I'm sure this is why Heisig tells his audience to only study from keyword to kanji, and not the other way around. The text is really training you to reach that third phase, that point in which the keyword and instantaneous visual memory have become completely linked.