The Heisig method, which recursively breaks down Chinese characters into patterns with arbitrary meanings, can help you sidestep this problem. You're never dealing with shapes anymore, but rather reconstructing stories from these stroke/meaning pairs. Since patterns consist of subpatterns, you can tweak the level of granularity until a sensible narrative emerges. Just recite that story as you move your pen.
It's a lifesaver as an adult foreign learner, but I don't really see anything preventing native writers of Chinese and Japanese from benefitting from this general process as well. I've wondered if the guys who pass those truly insane 6,000+ character exams have to fall back on some sort of hack at that point.
It's a lifesaver as an adult foreign learner, but I don't really see anything preventing native writers of Chinese and Japanese from benefitting from this general process as well. I've wondered if the guys who pass those truly insane 6,000+ character exams have to fall back on some sort of hack at that point.