Have some understanding of radicals. You find these in every character. Sometimes that's all there is, but usually there are extra strokes .Some characters are made of more than one radical put together but only one is actually defined as the radical for that character. You can find a list of the 214 of them here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Chinese_radical I don't recommend you learn all of them, but get used to the simple ones and their variations. Start with characters that have few strokes or those that are very common so you have many opportunities to see and write them. Taking 人 as a example, you'll see from the list that it is also written as 亻 in some characters. For example the character 他 ("he") has this 人 radical in 亻 form, and then the other strokes are 也 (which you may recognise as "also"). Similarly, 女 (which is used in words about females like "woman" and "girlfriend") is also squashed to the side in some characters like 她 ("she") - this also has 也 as the other strokes. Learning the meaning of some radicals (like the one above, the water one, roof one, etc) can make it easier to remember how to write and also give you some hint to the meaning of other characters you come across. More difficult characters can be learnt by combining easier characters. For example, 朋 (as in the word "friend", 朋友) is 月 ("month") twice, 从 (meaning "to" as in "to <a place>" or "to <a time>" is 人 ("person") twice. Another example is 想 ("to want/think/miss") which is 木，目 and 心 combined. You can see from the first two why it's important to write the character the right size. Some understanding of stroke order (usually left to right, top to bottom, etc.) will help too. There are many places to see a character's stroke order.

There is software, and one software I used, I downloaded from China. It is a software that gives a visual image of that the character means. But the radical suggestion is a good idea. There is an excellent website that can teach you the 214 Chinese radicals. There are only 187 radicals in simplified Chinese. Watch this youtube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0h18Rdhb44

I use Pleco flashcards for Android, but it's a bit outdated. Another good method is to try and write short, easy texts daily. You will consolidate the most common characters (pronouns, numbers, basic verbs) and you will start remembering new ones. Something else I do is to print a chinese text from a website and circle the characters I recognise, then search the ones I half recognise. If I am not sure, I don't circle them and I put them in the to-learn list. The more you practice the more circles you get.