I'm relying too much to stories found in this site, English is not my native tongue so I just make my own probably 1 out of 5 kanji for difficult english keywords. I've just broke into frame 610 [breath], and my retention rate go as low as 60% at 25-50 frames a day. Yes, I know I'm lazy, but do you guys think it's fine to rely on the stories found here?

It's fine as long as you like them and they stick. When you see a new kanji, read the story on the book (if any) and read some one the site. Then you can either use one of those or make your own if they don't suit you. Don't worry about your retention rate. 60% is fine so just keep adding and reviewing everyday.

Also, I'm not English so I translated most of the keywords to my language when I was doing rtk to avoid double translations. I did keep the English keyword on the stories where it helped me memorize the kanji though.

I mean, access to the ideas for stories of other people - that is what this site is about, right? I'm finding myself in a similar situation - for many kanji I cannot come up with a good story (or only a lame one), so I'm also relying a lot on what folks here posted before.

What I have found is that the 'copy the story' button in the right upper corner of each story is evil! Getting the idea from others is OK, but for the memorization it helps me a lot if I write it down on my own (in my own words).

The stories are not as important as the repetition.

Don't feel bad if you have to fail many words. Just keep repeating them over and over and it will ingrain in your mind.

The repetition is not as important as the story. If you have the correct story, you will remember the character far better than if you simply try to use those of others.

By all means seek ideas here, but have you really read and taken to heart Heisig's advice on how to put your story into play?

Reptition ensures that you will remember the kanji without the story.

A good story doesn't ensure anything, and forces you to rely on primitives.

We use the stories as a crutch before we become fluent. Not to be 'great' and always usable until the end of time.

I'm not saying that it's bad to have a good story. That's ridiculous. But the key to learning the characters isn't the story. It's doing it over and over again and exposing yourself to the keyword and character, and using the story to bridge that gap until you don't need it anymore.

It's especially not bad to look up stories here. Trying to think of a story for each one that is 'good' will take way too long for most people here and will probably hurt the learning process because learning will become work instead of fun.

If you have trouble with any of the English keywords, that might be adding unnessesary complexity to your reviews.

If you want your keywords to be in English, it might be a good idea to study some of them separately. Otherwise, I would use keywords in your native language.

Some of these keywords are somewhat obscure. Several of them were entirely new to me, even as a native speaker of English.

I got a good 90% of my stories from this site. Sure, I would occasionally come up with my own, or tweak one a little bit, but a lot of mine are straight copy/paste from here.

As for story vs. repetition, the story is more helpful to get it "into" your brain, but don't rely on it too much. The stories fall away, SRS continues on.

The story is important to avoid relearning during repetitions (as if it went straight to long term memory or something). That's how I feel. Making up a story or putting it in your own words sort of creates a path in your brain, and only then repetition is useful to keep the path cleared. With great stories, I have retention rates like 95%.

Let's play it nice, they're both important :p I'd say: in the beginning stories are weighted 80% importance, 20% on repetition; and that would switch later on not (repetition in the sense of reading a lot for example)?

Yeah, but a bad story (which if you look on the site, you won't have to use) can be overruled by anki reps. Not doing reps won't be overruled by a good story unless it's a really easy kanji.

Basically, if you use the stories on this site that have lots of stars and no noticeable problems (check out the little alerts to see if people disagree with the story), then you shouldn't feel bad about it. Those stories are good and we put them on the site for a reason.