MaruMori Knowledge Base

Creating / choosing / sharing stories (mnemonics)

What are "stories"?

A "story" is a mnemonic device here in Marumori, which is an indispensable learning tool used for remembering the meaning and reading of any kanji or vocabulary item.

We have two kinds of "stories": the "meaning story" and the "reading story".

For the "meaning story", we either take a vocabulary's meaning and the kanji it uses, or a kanji's meaning and its elements (i.e. the building blocks of a kanji, "radicals"), to create a fun, memorable story that puts them all together.

Take a look at 小 's meaning story as an example:

We do much the same with the "reading story", except it's done with an item's reading and meaning. Oftentimes, the two are connected in a way, with the reading story being the continuation of the meaning story.

The MaruMori team has created a whole bunch of kanji stories ready for you to use, and is currently working on vocabulary stories as well! ... What's that? You wanna make your own stories?

Heck yeah I do! Can I make my own stories?

Awesome, of course you can! Let me show you:

When viewing the dictionary entry of a vocabulary or kanji item, you'll notice a button that says "Edit" next to "Meaning/Reading story". Click on that to make a little window pop up!

Here, you'll find the "Personal" tab for stories, which is (you guessed it) where you can create your own personal stories! Just click "Create Story" on the bottom and you can start writing right away.

Feel free to click on any of the colored word blocks to help emphasize an item's elements (colored yellow), kanji (green), meaning/s (blue), or reading (red)!

If you're feeling proud of your creation, you can even publish this by toggling the "Publish" button, located at the bottom right of the window. 😉 That way, the entire MaruMori community will be able to see your awesome story!

NOTE: You can not unpublish the story after publishing it. Mainly because it can already have been favorited (and therefore used) by other users!

I changed my mind. Can I use stories made by other people instead?

Absolutely!

Just like before, click on the "Edit" button next to a "Reading/Meaning Story". You'll see that aside from the "Personal" tab, there's also "Community", "MaruMori", and "Favorite".

The "Community" tab will show any and all stories made by the MaruMori community. The "MaruMori" tab will show the story made by the MM team. And lastly, the "Favorite" tab will show what story you have favorited, which is what will be shown to you in reviews, lessons, and the item's dictionary entry . (By default, this will be assigned to the story made by MM team!)

To "favorite" a story, simply click on "favorite" button right under your story of choice.

And of course, if you see something made by the MM community that tickles or delights you, you can also show them love by clicking on the "heart" icon !

Hopefully, that's all you needed to know about "stories" here in MaruMori, but feel free to shoot us an email or send us a message in our Discord. Happy studies!! 😊