The Six-Part Recipe
Nearly every prompt that works contains the same six ingredients. Not every prompt needs all six — but when a result feels generic, it is almost always because one of these was left for the model to decide.
- Subject — what it is, specifically. A heron, not a bird.
- Action or state — what it is doing. Mid-stride through shallow water, not just standing there.
- Setting — where, and when. A tidal estuary at first light.
- Medium or style — what kind of image this is. 35mm photograph, gouache illustration, charcoal study.
- Light — the single highest-leverage word group in the whole prompt. Low backlight, mist catching the sun.
- Framing — where the camera is. Low angle, long lens, subject small in frame.
Watch it build:
- a heron → a stock bird on a white background
- a heron mid-stride through shallow water → now it's a scene
- …in a tidal estuary at first light → now it has a world
- …35mm photograph → now it has a medium, and stops looking like a render
- …low backlight, mist catching the sun → now it has mood, and this is where most of the quality arrives
- …low angle, long lens, subject small in frame → now it has a point of view, and it looks authored
Put the subject first. Most models weight the front of a prompt more heavily. Whatever the image is about should be in the first handful of words.
Cut the adjectives that describe quality rather than content. Beautiful, stunning, masterpiece, 8k, highly detailed, award-winning were load-bearing in 2022 and are mostly noise in 2026 models — they crowd out the words that are actually doing work. If a word doesn't change what a viewer would see, delete it.