Make a Story (The Story Method)

Memory is the brain’s way of integrating sensory-motor information into a symbolic representation that allows prediction of future occurrences. To better memorize it’s important to engage with the material in a way that complements how the brain performs this task.

The brain evolved to remember things that are living, active, colourful, vivid, and engaging, thus our difficulty to remember abstract things. But there are techniques that allows us to make it easier to memorize any kind of information.

This memorization technique involves creating associations between items in a list and assigning images to each connection to help you memorize better. 

For instance, your accounting exam is tomorrow and you need to memorize which items fall under the Current Asset section of a balance sheet (Cash, Inventories, Accounts receivable, Prepaid expenses).

This approach is really similar to the Link Method. While you create a bunch of different images between each two items using the Link Method, you combine everything into one big picture with the Story Method. This technique helps you memorize the sequence of the images and hence the order of the items. 

This is useful system for memorizing lists in a particular order. There are 2 steps:

1. Step 1 requires you to memorize words that are easy to associate with numbers (e.g. 1 to 5). You can use words that rhyme with the number, or shapes that resemble the number. 
2. Once this peglist is memorized, you can now associate the words with the list of objects you need to memorize.

If you are struggling to memorizing the whole decision making process in the correct order for the short answer section on your upcoming psychology exam, or anything similar, you should try out this method!

1. Bring to mind a room that you are very familiar with. 
   
2. As you walk into the room you’re familiar with, the corner over your left shoulder is number 1. Then, moving clockwise round the room, the next wall is number 2. And so on, so that there are 8 numbers. 9 will be the floor and 10 the ceiling.
3. To speed up recall and make it more vivid, number 10 pieces of paper 1 through 10, and draw them at random. Identify the location associated with the drawn number in your mental room as quickly as possible and think of all that is usually there.
4. Once your room is clear in your mind, incorporate into the room objects that are symbolically representative of the information you want to remember by using senses, emotions and actions to create a little narrative involving the object and the place.
5. You can add more rooms as needed. Continue the count, using the same over the left shoulder, clockwise routine: 1, 10, 11, 20, 21, 30, etc.