3.4 – Writing Your First Midjourney Prompt Lesson

Lesson Overview

Successful image generation with Midjourney starts with a well-crafted prompt. This lesson explains the building blocks of text prompts and shows how organizing your details leads to more effective creative output. By learning to separate your ideas into elements like medium, style, composition, scene, and atmosphere, you gain much more control over the images Midjourney produces.

This approach matters because AI image generators respond to how clearly you describe your intent. Without structure, prompts can become confusing or inconsistent, resulting in unexpected outcomes. By following a consistent method, you can better direct Midjourney and experiment with creative choices in a focused way.

This lesson is foundational within The Ultimate Guide to Generative AI. If you’re new to prompting, or if your previous attempts produced mixed results, this breakdown simplifies the process and makes it easier to build and refine your ideas. The concepts here are useful in fields like design, marketing, and creative projects—any situation where you need visuals with a specific mood or look.

If you’re looking to produce unique images from scratch, structure your creative thoughts, and communicate clearly with AI tools, this lesson is a practical starting point.

Who This Is For

Whether you’re just starting with Midjourney or want to improve your image generation skills, this lesson is for anyone who wants more control over their prompts.

• Designers aiming to prototype concepts quickly and with stylistic intent
• Content creators who need on-brand or themed graphics
• Educators looking to visually explain ideas or settings for students
• Marketers developing campaigns that require custom visuals
• Curious individuals experimenting with AI art for creative projects

Where This Fits in a Workflow

Writing structured prompts is often the first active step after setting up your Midjourney account. This lesson equips you to frame your requests clearly, which is essential before exploring more advanced prompt options or refining artworks further. For example, if you’re brainstorming a book cover, starting with medium, style, composition, scene, and atmosphere lets you iterate and refine ideas quickly—before spending time on adjustments or adding image references later.

This skill forms the base for building detailed or simple prompts to suit project needs. Whether you’re sketching a concept for branding, illustrating a mood for a story, or just exploring what’s possible, mastering prompt structure makes every creative session in Midjourney more intentional and productive.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Without a structured approach, prompts can become long, jumbled, or vague. This often leads Midjourney to generate images that don’t align with your vision, causing frustration and wasted time. By breaking your prompt into distinct pieces—medium, style, composition, scene, atmosphere—you introduce clarity, reduce ambiguity, and can systematically adjust elements to get closer to your goals.

For instance, updating only the medium or style provides focused results, instead of rewriting the entire prompt. If several people on your team are creating assets, this method supports consistency—everyone follows the same “formula,” producing images that align visually.

Overall, structured prompting smooths collaboration, saves time by reducing backtracking, and allows for rapid exploration of ideas with minimal guesswork.

Practice Exercise

Try your hand at writing a Midjourney prompt using the formula from the lesson. Choose a simple concept, for example: “A musician in a city at night.”

1. Break it down by specifying each section:
   1. Medium: Choose one (e.g., watercolor painting).
   2. Style: Pick a visual aesthetic (e.g., retro, neon, black and white).
   3. Composition: Decide on the framing (e.g., wide shot, close-up).
   4. Scene: Describe what the subject is doing (e.g., musician playing saxophone on a street corner).
2. Atmosphere: Set the mood (e.g., rainy evening, reflections on the sidewalk).
3. Write the full text prompt by combining these details.

Reflect: How did focusing on each section help you organize your ideas? Would your prompt be clear to someone else—or to an AI?

Course Context Recap

This lesson marks an important shift from learning about prompt components to actively putting them together in Midjourney. Previously, you explored what makes up a prompt. Now, you’ve seen how to combine those elements for your own creative outputs.

Next, you’ll learn about advanced prompting techniques and additional features Midjourney offers to style, enhance, or customize your results even further. Continue through the course to unlock the full potential of structured prompts and see just how far your creative ideas can go. Ready to advance? Complete the practice, then move forward or revisit topics in the full course as needed.