Basically, the idea is to make sure EVERYTHING in your kanji story is an OBJECT rather than a concept or verb. For example, Heisig himself recommends using a memorable person for the "person" primitive. So, instead of a vague generic class "person" you have "Mr.T" which instantly improves the quality of the stories. Same with the "feeling" primitive which is a concept that becomes "Data". This method is commonly used with nouns but not so much with adjectives, verbs, etc.

So, why not try to take it all the way then. If you were to take a holistic approach to objects you wouldn't have "tall", "child", "round" and "dirt" as elements in the 塾 (Cram school) kanji because all those words are generic, they are not objects. In the true spirit of objects you would make (for example) "tall" into "Shaquille O'Neal", "child" into "Tom Hanks", "round" into an actual object like a "beach ball" and perhaps go as far as instantiating "dirt" with an object like an "excavator" or something. Perhaps your stories would become much more memorable and easier to visualize. The crazier the story the better it sticks.

So if you were to, figuratively speaking, join the "Object-oriented" sect you would never use a non-object primitive because that would be against your religion.

I noticed that a lot of the kanji I fail have abstract primitives. I have trouble with "previously" but not with "formerly" because my "formerly" is represented with Prince (aka "The artist formerly known as Prince).

There's still a snag with Heisig's keywords not being objects but that's probably fine. You see a keyword like "inter" and recall a story out of objects like "tree" and "eye". The real trouble starts when that "inter" is used in as a component in something like "frost" 霜. It makes for stories that may sound clever but can be difficult to recall because they're abstract. You can still memorize a story like "FROST is kind of an inter-weather, phenomenon, something between rain, snow and freezing temp’s" but you're really not burning a vivid image into your mind and increasing your chances of forgetting, thus wasting your time.

Anyway, I already learned most of my kanji with stories that employ lots of abstract concepts, silly plays on words and other non-objects so it's too late for me. Maybe someone fresh can take this idea further and make some kick-ass stories that are impossible to forget.

This came up when I searched for similar discussions: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=1774
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=1675