Here’s a fun mnemonic system that I came up with. I couldn’t find any other similar systems but if you know of any, let me know. They are called abstract stories because they are a linked set of visual sentences holding the information for a type of data without telling you what that data is.
Abstract stories are stories that have missing elements to them and can be filled in with other information. You might have seen a Mad Lib book filled with paragraphs of little stories where key words have been dropped out, but the type of word is provided so you can insert your own. Game players are asked for random words and the story is then read back with those words.
A little Mad Lib story about a troll under a bridge starts out “One day, a < noun > wanted to cross a bridge over a pond. Under that bridge, lived a < adjective > and < adjective > troll. Stamp, stomp, stamp. He < action verb, past tense > over the bridge. ‘Who tramps over my bridge?’ yelled the troll. ‘Stop or I will < verb > you!’ But he had already crossed the bridge. On the next day…”
The story that you use will be associated with a type of data. Maybe it’s used to remember the important dates of a historical figure or the types of related data for a chemical element, a movie, or a drug. A benefit to the story is that you can always add another scene to the story to provide more fields for data about that main topic. It doesn’t really matter how you order the data as long as the abstract story you add to doesn’t change.
The basic story should be entertaining and provide somewhat expected relevant missing information. In other words, the birth date of a person might include a hospital, pregnant woman or baby crib in it. The death date might have a funeral, undertaker, or casket as part of the story. Also, it’s a type of story I call a protagonist story where the subject appears in each scene to provide narrative logic.
Here’s a four-part abstract story for a historical person:
- entrance/cue to the < subject’s substitute word > doing < subject’s relevant verb > with < subject’s relevant/substitute word noun >
- subject acts on the crib with < birth year item > in a place of < birth location >
- subject digs/fills a hole that is filled with and/or created by < work related items >
- subject acts on a casket with/made of < death year item > in a place of < death location >
Here’s some important facts about Napoleon Bonaparte:
- Born 1769 in Corsica.
- Was a military general.
- Died 1821 in St. Helena.
Here’s the concrete story for Napoleon Bonaparte using the last two digits of important years by Major system and the abstract historical person story above:
- A little fat guy wearing a two-cornered hat opens a half-gallon carton of Neapolitan ice cream by tearing off a little hand tucked inside on the front. He eats the little hand and uses the bone to dish out the ice cream.
- The little man feeds the ice cream to a baby in a crib in the shape of a ship and rocks it back and forth crushing apple cores under some trees.
- He takes the crushed apple cores to bury them in a hole that has been created by a regiment of soldiers who bombed the hole in the ground.
- The little fat guy finds a dead body in the hole and places it in a casket made of a large carved nut which he then takes to cremate in a volcano in Washington with devils in the bottom of it.
I’d like to see what other people come up with to create a story for other historical figures using the abstract story to see how it works for them. And suggestions for other abstract stories would be great too, for chemical element data, movies, drugs, etc. This is fairly new to me but so far effective.
I can see where preparing a 12-field abstract story might allow competitive memory athletes to quickly create a story for the data that is in the Three Strikes You’re Out event, also known as the Tea Party Guests event in the USA memory championships. You can try your memory on a random person data generator @josh created for this.
I had created a system for abstract pegs which was also useful but this is the other main type of abstract system and might even be more useful. Have fun with it.
Doug