Midjourney prompts that work: subject, style, light, then shut up
Most bad MJ outputs come from cramming too much. Four parts in the right order get you 80 percent of the way.
A Midjourney prompt is not a paragraph. It is a list the model reads loosely, so order and emphasis beat volume.
I use: subject first (what it is), then style (photoreal, anime, editorial), then light and mood (soft window light, high contrast), then technical bits like aspect ratio. Each part is a few words, not a sentence.
The mistake is writing 'a cozy cafe with warm light and people laughing and books and plants and a cat and rain on the window' - the model averages all of it into mush. Pick the three things that matter and drop the rest.
Save the five prompts that landed. They become your personal style presets, which beats regenerating from scratch every time.