How to write a Midjourney prompt: structure, parameters and examples

The five building blocks

1. Subject. Who or what is in the image, with the details that matter: a man in a navy business suit holding a coffee cup.
2. Composition. Shot type, camera angle, framing and depth: medium shot, low angle, centred, shallow depth of field.
3. Style and medium. Photograph, oil painting, 3D render, film still, illustration, plus any era or movement.
4. Lighting and environment. Where it happens and how it is lit: rainy Tokyo street at night, neon reflections, soft rim light.
5. Parameters. Settings that go at the very end, each starting with two dashes.

Parameters worth knowing

Parameter ranges and defaults can change between model versions, so check Midjourney's own documentation when something behaves unexpectedly.

Examples

Weak: businessman, cool, cinematic

Strong: a man in a navy business suit crossing a rainy Tokyo street at night, medium shot, low angle, shallow depth of field, cinematic film still, neon reflections on wet asphalt, soft rim light --ar 16:9 --s 200

The strong version tells Midjourney what to show, how to frame it, what it should look like and how it is lit. Every word is doing a job.

Common mistakes

• Stacking adjectives like beautiful, stunning, amazing. They add little; concrete details add a lot.
• Contradictions such as minimalist, highly detailed, busy.
• Burying parameters in the middle of the prompt. Put them at the end.
• Not saving what worked. The prompt that nailed it last week is the one you can't find today.

Doing this faster with Dreamdrive

Dreamdrive's Dreamtune turns these building blocks into dropdowns (Composition, Subject, Reference, Technical, Style and Environment), so you pick camera angle, framing, shot type, focus and depth instead of remembering the vocabulary. Every result is saved to My Prompts automatically.

Frequently asked questions