How to Remember a Story Using a Memory Palace

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How to Remember a Story Using a Memory Palace

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If you want to remember a story, the process is actually pretty simple.

You can be as detailed as you like, or just recite the general gist of a tale.

And by the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to entertain people at parties or include stories in your speeches and presentations.

Or maybe you want to better convince your friends to read stories and watch the movies you love. That will be much easier for you to do as well.

If you want to become a better writer, nothing will help you more than knowing stories inside and out.

Even better than that, on this page, I’m also going to show you how to memorize the ins-and-outs of plot.

Who am I to teach you about remembering stories?

Well, in addition to having told a story at a TEDx event that now has nearly 2.5 million views, I spent nearly a decade as a Film Studies professor.

I also spent a few years working as a story consultant on movies that actually got made. And I’ve written two well-received books about screenwriting.

Indeed, I got my story consulting gigs partly because of the books I’ve written on screenwriting. I even have a writing credit on my IMDB profile.

Anthony Metivier on the set of Bailout with Eddie Furlong, Dominic Purcell and Uwe Boll

Although I certainly don’t know everything under the sun, I’ve proven that I can write and help craft successful stories. I’ve memorized detailed stories and delivered them before the masses.

And if you’re ready to remember any story, I’m confident my tips will help you out

So let’s get started!

Two Different Ways to Remember a Story

When it comes to reciting a story from memory, there are two main ways to proceed.

Both approaches are powerful. Which one you pick depends on your goal.

You’ll also want to consider your existing skills with memory methods overall. You can check my guide to the main memory techniques to get a sense of where you currently stand.

With that in mind, let’s look at the two main strategies for remembering stories.

Story Strategy #1: Verbatim

Memorizing a story verbatim is powerful when you care about the exact language.

There are many circumstances where word-for-word recall matters.

Take my TEDx Talk, for example. This platform requires you to deliver your message within a particular timeframe. You simply cannot afford to go off on tangents, and verbatim memorization helps make sure you follow the script and finish on time.

People who memorize scripture tend to want to memorize a particular translation verbatim for theological or poetic reasons.

Then there are actors like my fellow mnemonist, Ashley Strand. On this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, he shared how he memorized the entire Book of Matthew:

Ashley’s example involved acting, but fits more exactly under the banner of monologue memorization.

In addition to his recitation of the Book of Mark, the most impressive recitation I’ve seen was Ralph Fiennes in Faith Healer.

I caught the play while living in Manhattan, but had read it many years earlier as an undergrad in an English course.

As a stage production, Faith Healer is remarkable because the Frank Hardy role involves two long narrative monologues. The first one is at least 30 minutes long and I was blown away by watching Fiennes deliver it.

Even more remarkably, the play is itself about how memory shifts and changes. As Fiennes shared in this Irish Times article, he spent a very long time with the text. But during the last two weeks he focused specifically on “feelings, emotions, and nuances.”

Like Ashley Strand, Fiennes needed to deliver the exact words.

Unlike Strand’s experience, however, Fiennes did not have to work on interpreting the text. As Fiennes told his interviewer, Faith Healer is “extraordinary because when you’ve got it inside you, in the memory, it’s a support. With writing that is less masterful, you would have to compensate or find things in the interpretation to keep it buoyant.”

If you choose to memorize a story verbatim, keep these points in mind. Some stories will have features built into them that help you remember them better.

Others, like various stories in the Books of the Bible, may require more interpretation and even additional research or personal study.

Story Strategy #2: Generative Memorization Based on “Story DNA”

Many people know that ancient cultures passed their stories on verbally.

But that doesn’t mean they recited them verbatim.

As Alfred Lord reports in Singer of Tales, many story tellers actually memorized a variety of formulas.

In this video, I talk about how this technique likely worked, one that I’ve used myself as a Film Studies professor many times:

There are quite a few ways you can memorize formulas to generate new versions of stories on the spot.

Or, you can learn formulas in ways that help you recite and explain particular sequences in movies.

You can see an example of me doing this in my case study of Minority Report or the one on Training Day. Each of these video lessons is based on one of the Film Studies lectures I delivered while teaching at the University of Saarland in Germany.

To talk about story architecture in this way, it’s not that I memorized the stories verbatim. No, I literally memorized the “Story DNA” based on an understanding of Vladimir Propp‘s Morphology of the Folktale amongst other narratological tools found in the field of literary criticism.

Should you take such a deep dive into story mechanics in order to remember stories better?

Personally, I believe so. Here’s why:

Why Remembering Stories is an Underrated Career Skill

Reciting stories is not a trick.

It’s a skill that can give you an unfair advantage, especially in high-stakes careers. These career areas include:

The legal industry
Bartending
Being a musician addressing an audience between sets
Therapeutic careers (medicine and psychology)
Leadership and management
Sales and marketing

There are more use cases in my Guide to Using Mnemonics in Your Everyday Life.

I’m especially fond of the mixologist David Curtis who shared on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast how memory techniques have boosted his bartending career.

And although we’ve already discussed acting above, we should not forget becoming a magician.

As discussed in an episode of my podcast with the inventive magician, novelist and AI innovator Andrew Mayne, there are many benefits for magicians who use memdecks in their performances.

Story deck routines fall under this rubric and Bill Malone’s performance of Sam the Bellhop is one of the most famous examples of a story helping making a magician’s career:

Now that you know how lucrative being able to tell stories better can be, let’s look deeper at one of the easiest ways to get started remembering them.

The best point of entry I’m aware of is to spend a bit of time examining the nature of stories before you even apply a single mnemonic technique.

What is a Story Anyway?

One of the most interesting aspects involved in memorizing stories, is that you soon discover every narrative is composed of many different kinds of information.

Just about every story will involve:

Names, places, locations
Descriptions
Special terms (sometimes foreign vocabulary)
Quotes and epigraphs
Actions
Dialogue
Numbers
Themes
Plot
Characterization
Details about the author, publishing history, audience reception

The more you divide these types of information in your mind, the more you’ll be able to approach the story as a whole with dexterity.

With these different types of story information in mind, let’s look at the process step-by-step.

How to Remember A Story in 7 Easy Steps

As you go through these steps, keep in mind that you don’t have to master each and every one the first time you commit a story to memory.

The more you allow yourself to grow with the story memorizing process, the more success you’ll have.

Horror Genre Secrets for Screenwriters by Anthony Metivier Book Cover

That said, it’s important to focus on these fundamentals.

Why?

Because we don’t want to put the cart ahead of the horse and wind up frustrated.

That’s why I’ve done my best to arrange the steps you’re about to discover in order of priority, keeping beginners with no prior experience with remembering stories in mind.

Step One: Decide on the Exact Goal

Before you start committing any of the story to memory, think about your exact goal.

Are you:

Delivering the story as part of a memorized speech?
Committing scripture to memory?
Memorizing stories to prepare for any type of exam?
Required to recite the story verbatim?
Or are you allowed to work from bullet points?

I ask these questions because when I gave my TEDx Talk, I memorized the entire story word for word.

But when I was a film professor and summarized stories as part of my lectures, I usually memorized just the bullet point version of those stories. Because I know all of the plot points by memory, I often didn’t even need to do that. (We’ll talk more about the plot points method in a moment.)

When I memorize scripture, I sometimes include the verse number, which involves knowing a technique called the Major System or 00-99 PAO.

Step Two: Get Intimately Familiar with the Story

This probably goes without saying, but you’ll want to read the story in its entirety first, or watch the movie in full.

And I would suggest you go a few steps further.

In addition to going through the material thoroughly, read about the story.

One thing I used to do as a Film Studies professor was to read the screenplay before watching a movie. Then I’d watch the movie and read as many reviews and critical interpretations as I could find. If I had time, I’d watch the movie at least one more time before writing my lecture.

In the case of short stories or novels, there is no screenplay. However, you can follow-up by reading articles, interviews with the author and reviews on bookseller pages and book reviews.

All of these efforts will help build a larger web of associations in your mind that make the actual memorization a lot easier. It also makes everything a lot more fun because you’re making yourself an expert about the story itself.

Do this enough times, and you’ll come to think about the place of the stories you remember in the context of history, philosophy and the culture at large, all of which is very rewarding.

Step Three: Create a Primary and Secondary Memory Palace

When you really want to know a story well, I suggest you have at least two Memory Palaces instead of just one.

What’s a Memory Palace?

It’s a simple mnemonic device that allows you to create mental versions of locations. Typically, you would base them on homes, offices, schools and any location you’re familiar with and can easily organize into a simple journey.

Why two Memory Palaces?

I’ve found it very helpful to have all the names of the characters and location names in one Memory Palace, and the major plot points in another.

This approach is useful even if you’re memorizing the story verbatim. It helps you get some of the harder elements out of the way first. And knowing character names also serves as a kind of time signature. It’s easier to remember parts of the plot because you’ll remember the names of the characters and place names with knowledge of the order in which they come up.

If you like, you can extract the character names while you’re reading by using the technique I teach in how to memorize a textbook.

Step Four: Memorize Word for Word

To memorize verbatim is a simple affair.

You just need to assign associative, mnemonic images for the words and lay those associations out along your Memory Palace journey.

Now, if you’re new to the practice, you might need more images than a more experienced memorizer. For example, there are tons of operator words, like “to,” “it,” “he,” etc.

For these words, it’s no more or less difficult to come up with images than it is for more complex words. Basically, everything comes down to your level of skill with the techniques and completing the exercises in the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass.

Often, you can get away without having an image for such words. When I memorized the story I told in my TEDx Talk, I managed to relate it word-for-word by just encoding the keywords. Because I know English, most of the smaller words fell logically into place. And if they were slightly different here and there, it did not change the theme or message of the story I told.

The final part of this step is to segment the memorization. Rather than expect to memorize the entire thing in one go, break it down. I like to memorize for 5-10 minutes, then take a break.

This might seem slow to you, but in the end, it’s actually faster. You’ll make fewer encoding errors and spend a lot more time with your full mental powers charged. If you plow on while drained, you’ll wind up spending too much time correcting issues that didn’t need to be there in the first place.

Step Five: Robust Rehearsal

Once you have any amount of material memorized, it’s important to start reviewing it.

For this, I use a process called Recall Rehearsal. It taps into the memory science of active recall.

To make the process as effective and efficient as possible, I follow these steps:

Find a quiet place where I won’t be disturbed
Have pen and paper ready
Write out the memorized narrative material in forward order
Check the accuracy
Use the memory techniques to correct any unacceptable errors

But when I really want to present at my best and feel “bulletproof” on the stage, I go further.

I write out the speech in reverse order and out of order.

For example, the odd numbered sentences are typically on the odd-numbered stations in the Memory Palace I use. That means I can write the entire speech forwards with only the odd numbered sentences forward.

Then I write the even numbered sentences on the second pass, but this time in reverse order.

Why do this?

The answer is simple: It gives each sentence extra doses of primacy effect and recency effect.

Not everyone has to go to this extent. But I always do it when I want to speed up the memorization process and feel extra-familiar with each and every word I’m delivering on the stage.

Step Six: Practice Your Delivery

Although writing out the story from memory is a form of practice, it’s important to practice verbally delivering your story as often as you can.

Thomas Kraft suggested that I walk while reciting the talk. Since I could take my walks in the Memory Palace I used for my TEDx Talk, I did exactly that.

Here’s an illustration of that Memory Palace, located in Kelvin Grove, Australia, where I was living at the time:

Memory Palace Example of Kelvin Grove in Australia — A Memory Palace Example based on a Brisbane neighborhood I used to live in

Now, why might Thomas have given that advice? And why is it worth paying attention to scientifically?

The answer is context-dependent memory. Any time you can contextually relate the content you’re memorizing with the actual Memory Palace location you’re using, you will get a recall boost.

Since I walk relatively quickly, I kept context-dependence in mind. But also another aspect about memory psychologists have found called state dependent memory.

Because I didn’t want to recite the story in my TEDx Talk too quickly, slowing down created a calmer state that improved the speed of my delivery.

To expand my practice of delivery across multiple contexts and psychological states, I practiced both mentally, by writing the speech by hand from memory and recording myself.

As a result, I wound up with a much more robust understanding of the story-based talk in all of its parts and delivered it with confidence I would not have achieved otherwise. I know because as a university professor, I’ve delivered a lot of talks in different ways and the process I’m sharing today is by far the most reliable when it comes to results for your audience.

Step Seven: Memorize and Recite More Stories

Mastery won’t come from memorizing just one story. You’ll want to carry on and remember many more.

It’s also advisable to remember several kinds of stories:

Short anecdotes
Jokes
Narrative poetry
Parables

The more variety you work with, the more your skills will grow.

How to Remember Plot Points

Again, the Memory Palace will be your go-to technique for this.

I would string out the following narrative elements along a journey, perhaps using the Magnetic Memory Method approach to the story method.

The major plot points in most stories are:

Character is haunted by a ghost from the past
The world is in some kind of flux or change
Character has a driving ambition that is in conflict with an unconscious need
Character encounters a problem that must be solved
There is a period of delay as the character resists the dilemma or thinks through multiple avenues of action
A crisis forces the character to take action (usually the least desirable option)
Along the way to solving the problem the character either:
- Gathers allies that help
- Undergoes a training sequence
During the battle, the character experiences a self-revelation that resolves the ghost and the conflict between the driving ambition and the unconscious need
Following the problem-resolution, the world of flux resolves to a stable state

Note that not all of these plot points necessarily unfold in the same order in every story. And not every story has all of them.

But if you commit this general structure to memory, they will start leaping out at you as you read stories and watch movies.

And this knowledge of story architecture itself will help you remember stories much better.

As will knowledge of Memory Palace structures. If you’d like help with developing them so you can remember everything we discussed above, feel free to register in my free memory improvement course:

It takes you through a series of exercises with worksheets and video tutorials you won’t find anywhere else.

Remembering Stories Is Easy

So, what do you say?

Are you ready to commit your first story to memory?

How will you do it?

Verbatim or just based on the general plot?

I suggest you spend some part of your life mastering both. It’s tremendously rewarding.

And if you’d like more context with respect to lines of dialog, check out my article on how to memorize lines next.

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