I discovered a way to help me remember the Kanji.  Larger stories.  Instead of learning individual stories for each Kanji, I now group them together into one big story.

With a little imagination, the story basically writes itself.  Start with any lesson and make up a story using the key words in order.  The order of the key words makes up the story, you just fill in the gaps.  When filling in the gaps, it is important to use different words to represent things since they may be used later as key words. Also, include primitives. 

The reason it works for me is that it is easier for me to recall the story as a whole. I will know which keyword comes before and after.  This helps in the review, especially when a keyword has a primitive that does not stand alone on its own. 

When I make up the story, my mind makes up vivid images, like watching a movie inside my head. The images are orginal to me. It is like when someone tells you an interesting story and your mind makes up the images.  When you recall the story to tell it to someone else, your mind goes back to those images.

The keyword seem to have a natural flow to them. Even within the lesson, they natually come to a stopping place and you can begin a new story with new characters.

When using a keyword, you have to incorporate the elements that make up the Kanji.  For example:  I will start with keyword 568. Noon.

It was high NOON in the Old West. The HORSE'S HEAD came out of a sillohuette behind the sun.  I am walking along the path when a sheriff stops me and says, "Son, I need a few WORDS with you and your HORSE.  You need a PERMIT to be in this part of town."
I said, "What horse? This is a PEGASUS!".  The sheriff's face came to a DELIGHT because he had never seen a pegasus before.  He LACKed experiance with PEGASUS.  To his DELIGHT, he said, "Well, it is within my AUTHORITY to grant you that permit. My AUTHORITY allows you to fly your PEGASUS to that TREE. While you are up there, get an OUTLOOK from you PEGASUS's eyes and SEE what is out there."

And so on.  I move on to FEATHERS to continue the story. If I repeat the story, it is easy for me to remember.  Just as we can quote lines from movies, we can recall Kanji. The better I visualize the pictures in my mind, the easier it is to remember. Like Heisig says, "If you can remember the story, you will remember the Kanji.

I call this a novel because it is written first, in our minds, unless you actually want to spell out the whole thing. Maybe someday, someone will make a movie.

Imagine, a movie with all the keywords and elements and visual imagery. Watch the movies a few times like we all do with our favorite movies to the point of memorization and we could have a powerful tool to learn this faster. 

The way I learn now, is I make up the story first until I get to a natural stopping place, then I go back and learn how to write the Kanji. 

I am going to go back to the beginning and following this method. I hate to think I am reinventing the wheel, but has this been done before?

Wisher