Actually, many Chinese characters can be remembered by separating a character into parts and combine the parts with other "partial characters" (ok, that word is coined, I wanted to say 部首). Like you can have 组 and 姐, the parts to the right of both characters are the same. There are also 草 and 花 who share the same upper part. It's in a way the same thing with English words, which might have prefixes or suffixes etc. So once you get a grip onto the formation of the characters, you can somehow see why a character is written that way. For example, the character 炒 certainly makes sense because when you cook, you use fire; and if you actually cook, you know that the cooked food usually looks less than it was before cooking --- and hense the character.
Of course, what I've said above is just a way to initialize your memory; to firmly remember the characters, you need to copy them down, over and over again --- memorization by repetition (man, that I sound like a psychologist!).
Anyway, there's nothing else left to say except good luck~~