How to Write Midjourney Prompts That Actually Work

Midjourney is astonishing — until your results look like everyone else's. The fix isn't a secret style; it's structure. Great Midjourney prompts follow a repeatable order, and once you know it, you can describe almost anything.

Here's the formula I use.

The formula

[subject] + [art style] + [lighting] + [camera / framing] + [mood / colour] + [--flags]

Work left to right. Each slot narrows the image; skip one and Midjourney fills it with an average.

1. Subject — be concrete

Start with what, specifically. "A woman" is weak. "A woman in her 40s, short silver hair, linen suit, mid-laugh" gives the model something to hold onto. Nouns and adjectives do the heavy lifting here.

2. Art style — set the visual language

This is the biggest lever on how the image feels:

• cinematic film still
• editorial photography
• watercolour illustration
• 3D render, octane
• flat vector

You can name eras ("1970s film"), media ("oil painting"), or render engines. One or two style cues is plenty — stacking ten muddies the result.

3. Lighting — the difference between flat and pro

Lighting is what makes an image look shot rather than generated:

• soft box studio lighting
• golden hour backlight
• dramatic rim light
• overcast, diffused

If your images look flat, this is almost always the missing slot.

4. Camera / framing — direct the shot

Tell Midjourney where the camera is:

• close-up portrait, 85mm
• wide establishing shot
• top-down flat lay
• low angle, shallow depth of field

Lens language (85mm, 35mm, macro) is powerful shorthand for the whole look.

5. Mood & colour — the finishing layer

• moody, muted teal and amber
• bright, high-key, pastel
• high contrast, cinematic grade

6. The flags that matter

Midjourney's -- parameters change the output meaningfully:

• --ar 16:9 — aspect ratio (do this deliberately; the default 1:1 is rarely what you want)
• --style raw — less of Midjourney's "beautification," more literal control
• --stylize 250 — how much artistic liberty (low = literal, high = stylised)
• --chaos 20 — variety across the four results
• --no text, watermark — exclude things you don't want

A full example

Editorial photo of a woman in her 40s, short silver hair, linen suit, mid-laugh, in a sunlit minimalist studio — soft box lighting, 85mm close-up, shallow depth of field, warm muted palette --ar 4:5 --style raw --stylize 200

Compare that to "a professional woman." Same model, completely different league.

Editing and restyling

The same structure applies when you're editing a photo ("keep the subject, change the background to a rainy Tokyo street at night") or restyling one ("turn this portrait into a 90s anime cel"). Lead with what to preserve, then what to change.

Skip the memorising

You don't have to keep this formula in your head. Our free Image Prompt Builder walks you through each slot — subject, style, lighting, camera, ratio — and formats the prompt correctly for your tool, including the right Midjourney flags (or a negative prompt for Stable Diffusion and Flux, or instruction-style phrasing for ChatGPT and Gemini).

Try it free on 0X4 Labs — or keep this formula handy and level up your prompts by hand today.