Runway Prompting Is Less Magic Than People Say
A good Runway clip comes from one clear action and a look, not from a poetic paragraph. Here's the pattern.
People sell Runway as 'type a dream.' In practice my dream paragraphs gave me soup. What worked was a subject, a single action, and a look, separated: 'a red train, pulls out of a station, overcast documentary style.'
The single action is the key. 'A train arrives, a dog runs, rain starts' makes Runway pick one and fumble the rest. One verb per clip, then stitch in the editor. The model is a shot-maker, not a director, so I direct by limiting it.
Style words carry more than I expected. 'documentary,' 'anime,' '35mm' each steer the result hard, and combining them fights. Pick one style adjective and let the subject do the rest. The poetic pile of modifiers just averages out to gray.
Negative prompts help: 'no text, no watermark, steady cam' removed the two things Runway loves to add. The pattern that works is boring: one action, one look, two negatives. Less magic, more control, better clips.