I’ve been tweaking my 2-digit major system list over the last month or so. I’ve added adjectives and locations to the traditional PAO items. (Or elaborations and terrains as @thinkaboutthebible likes to call them!) 
While committing these new words to memory, I’ve come across something interesting and wanted to see what everyone thought about the process of actually locking in multiple words for a number.
For my “15” word set, I’ve settled on DeLi (location), DoLLy (person), DoLLing (action), TaLL (adjective), DoLL (object).
So here’s the rub… when trying to lock that in so that 15 gives me those words I initially pictured a scene like “at the deli, Dolly Parton is putting makeup (dolling) on a very tall raggedy ann doll.”
The problem I see is that if I get too automatic with that particular picture when I come across just the number 15 in a sequence, it will be hard to separate the components because Dolly won’t always be at the deli.
If my sequence is 1515151515, then that full image works, but I could see myself getting crossed up if I always picture Dolly dollying something, or the doll as always tall.
I’ve started re-locking the words on their own, so that now if I see 15 in the item place its just a doll. Not a tall doll or a dolled up doll, just a doll. Same with the location. Its just a deli. Dolly’s not there, nobody is dolling anybody, its just a deli.
This is taking a little bit more mental effort to lock in. It would be easier to imagine the scene and then boom all the words are locked in quickly, but I think it will pay off by making things clearer and quicker once they are individually automatic.
For people going with a PAO approach where only the person fits the major system encoding, like CHeR singing with a microphone for 64, does it matter that singing and microphone are inextricably linked to CHeR? Does the extra step of decoding microphone to cher to 64 have a disadvantage compared to directly linking 15 to DoLL?
Been fascinated with how folks minds make these connections and encode / decode with speed.
Any general thoughts on this topic? Anybody have the same realization when initially memorizing your PAO lists and adjust how you locked it in?