A mnemonic is a short, deliberately ridiculous scene, built to be hard to forget. Who appears in it and where it takes place are how the pronunciation is stored; the objects in it stand for the parts the character is written with. That is the Marilyn Method, and the comic below is the same scene, drawn.
Mnemonic symbol: a thick green sewage pipe sticking out of the floor, from the shape of the character: the horizontal stroke is the floor, and 小 below it is the earth around the pipe.
Chinese characters are built out of smaller characters. Each component carries a mnemonic symbol - one concrete object that stands in for it - and a mnemonic story hands those objects to the person and the place that stand for the pronunciation. Learn a component once and every character that reuses it gets easier.
Make it your learning target and MandarinBanana works out the shortest route to it: the two sounds its syllable is built from, then the components of the character itself, one short step at a time. No account needed to start.
one of the characters used in kwukyel (phonetic "pin"), an ancient Korean writing system
The sewage pipe is a thick, glossy green PVC pipe, wide enough for a person to climb through, rising straight up out of a small square patch of grey concrete floor. Its top end is open, with no lid or grate, and finished with a broad, flat rim that flares out around the opening like a collar; it is tilted slightly towards the viewer so the dark round opening and the inside of the pipe are clearly visible.
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