Midjourney for Beginners: Your First Week, Step by Step

How a Midjourney prompt works

A prompt is a short description of the image you want. Midjourney reads it and returns a grid of images. You then pick the ones you like and refine them. That loop of describe, look, adjust is the whole skill, and it gets faster with practice.

A good beginner prompt has three parts in this order:

1. Subject: what the image is of. "A red fox sitting in fresh snow."
2. Details and style: setting, lighting, mood, medium. "Early morning, soft blue light, wildlife photography, quiet mood."
3. Parameters: settings that start with -- and always go at the very end, such as aspect ratio.

Put together:

a red fox sitting in fresh snow, early morning, soft blue light, wildlife photography, quiet mood --ar 3:2

Midjourney responds best to clear, concrete description. Write what a viewer would see, not instructions like "please make" or "I want". If you would like to supply a picture as a starting point, an image prompt URL goes at the start of the prompt, before the text. Our guide to prompt structure goes deeper on ordering.

The parameters to learn first

Midjourney has many parameters, but a handful cover most of what beginners need. Learn these in your first week and ignore the rest for now.

Two buttons matter as much as any parameter. Vary (Subtle or Strong) makes new versions of an image you like, and Upscale produces a larger, more detailed version. Use Vary Subtle to polish a near-miss and Vary Strong to explore.

Common beginner mistakes

• Writing a paragraph. Long prompts with many competing ideas produce muddled images. Start short and add detail one piece at a time.
• Using negative words in the prompt. "A beach with no people" can actually add people, because Midjourney picks up the word. Use --no people instead.
• Putting parameters in the middle. Parameters belong at the end. Anything after them may be ignored or cause an error.
• Expecting accurate text. Midjourney can render a short word or two, but it is unreliable with long exact text, so logos and typography usually need finishing in a design tool.
• Changing everything at once. If you edit five words and two parameters, you cannot tell what made the difference. Change one thing per run.
• Relying on vague quality words. "Beautiful, amazing, best quality" adds little. Specific words such as "overcast light", "close-up" or "linen texture" do far more.
• Not saving what worked. Good prompts get buried quickly. See our guide on saving Midjourney prompts.

Your 7-day practice plan

Spend 20 to 30 minutes a day. Each day builds one skill on top of the last.

1. Day 1, subjects. Write ten short prompts of a single subject each, with no style words. Notice how Midjourney fills the gaps. Example: an old bicycle leaning against a brick wall.
2. Day 2, aspect ratio. Take your three favourite prompts from day 1 and run each at --ar 1:1, --ar 16:9 and --ar 9:16. See how composition changes with the frame.
3. Day 3, light and mood. Keep one subject and change only the lighting: golden hour, overcast, neon at night, candlelight, harsh midday sun.
4. Day 4, medium and style. Same subject again as a photograph, a watercolour, a linocut print, a 3D render and a charcoal sketch. Describe styles by qualities rather than by artists’ names.
5. Day 5, stylize and chaos. Run one prompt at --s 0, --s 100 and --s 750, then try --c 0 against --c 50. Write down what each does in your own words.
6. Day 6, refine. Pick one image you like. Use Vary Subtle and Vary Strong, adjust a single word at a time, and upscale the best result.
7. Day 7, a mini project. Create a set of four images that belong together, for example four seasons of the same cottage. Keep the wording and parameters identical except for the season.

A day 7 prompt might look like this:

a small stone cottage beside a stream, autumn, falling leaves, soft afternoon light, cosy storybook illustration --ar 4:5 --s 200

What to do after week one

Once the basics feel natural, the next steps are consistency and control. Explore style references with --sref to apply the same look across many images, and try --sref random to discover new looks. Learn --weird for unconventional results and --niji if you like anime and illustration.

Keep a short log of what each experiment taught you. After a month you will have your own reference book of prompts and settings that work for the kind of images you make, which is worth more than any list of magic keywords.

Doing this faster with Dreamdrive

Dreamdrive saves every prompt you run automatically, with its picture, model and settings, into the project you choose, so you can search your Library for it later, copy it with Copy prompt or drag the picture into another tool.