The method of "Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters" ( https://www.amazon.com/Tuttle-Learning-Chinese-Characters-Re... ) is working very well for me for memorization.

It uses mnemonics, but it only loosely follows real etymologys. It diverges to nonsensical, but memorable stories when this will make things easier to remember. It also has mnemonics to remember tone and pronunciation (for Mandarin Chinese only though).