Hi Cleo,
To remember every stroke of characters I’d say there is no short cut - you have to repeatedly write them. That is what we native speakers have to do in Taiwan from 6 to 12 years old.
It might help if you try to break each character down to parts(e.g. recognising radicals is a good way to start), and find the common parts shared by certain characters, so you can group characters based on their shape, then writing characters becomes a matter of combining different parts. It should be easier than trying to remember every stroke of characters individually.