How to Write Prompts for Sora: A Practical Guide to Better AI Videos

How to Write Prompts for Sora That Actually Work

I spent the last few weeks testing hundreds of prompts on Sora, and the difference between a good prompt and a bad one is staggering. A vague prompt gives you a generic, lifeless clip. A well-crafted prompt produces something cinematic. If you're struggling to get consistent results from Sora, this guide breaks down exactly what works — based on real experiments, not theory.

Sora interprets natural language, but it responds best to prompts that follow a specific structure. I'll walk you through the key building blocks, show you real before-and-after examples, and share the mistakes I made so you don't have to.

Start With the Scene, Not the Action

The biggest mistake I see beginners make is jumping straight into action. "A man runs through the forest" sounds reasonable, but it gives Sora almost nothing to work with visually.

Instead, set the scene first. Describe the environment, the lighting, and the mood before introducing any movement. Think of it like a film — the establishing shot comes before the action.

Weak prompt:

A dog playing in a park.

Strong prompt:

A golden retriever in a sunlit suburban park during late afternoon. The grass is bright green, and tall oak trees cast long shadows across the field. The dog leaps to catch a frisbee mid-air, ears flapping, with a shallow depth of field blurring the background.

The second prompt tells Sora exactly what to render: the breed, the time of day, the lighting quality, and the specific action. More importantly, it gives Sora the visual context to make the scene feel real.

Key Elements of Scene Description

• Location: Be specific. "A cobblestone alley in Prague" is far better than "a street."
• Time of day: This controls lighting. "Golden hour" gives you warm tones; "overcast noon" gives you flat, even light.
• Weather and atmosphere: Fog, rain, dust particles — these add depth and mood.
• Color palette: If you want a specific look, mention it. "Muted earth tones" or "neon-lit" guides the visual style.

Master Camera Language

Sora understands cinematography terms, and using them is one of the fastest ways to level up your results. If you don't specify camera behavior, Sora defaults to a static or slowly drifting shot — which is fine, but rarely impressive.

Here are the camera terms that work reliably:

Camera Term	What It Does	When to Use It
Tracking shot	Camera follows the subject	Walking or running scenes
Dolly zoom	Background warps while subject stays fixed	Dramatic reveal or tension
Low angle	Camera looks up at subject	Making something look powerful
Aerial / drone shot	Bird's-eye perspective	Landscapes, city scenes
Close-up	Tight framing on face or object	Emotional moments, detail shots
Slow motion	Reduced playback speed	Action, water, fabric movement

Example with camera direction:

A slow tracking shot follows a woman in a red coat walking through a narrow Tokyo alley at night. Neon signs reflect off wet pavement. Shot on 35mm film with shallow depth of field and natural motion blur.

Notice the "shot on 35mm film" part — Sora responds to equipment references. Mentioning specific cameras or lenses (like "anamorphic lens" or "shot on ARRI Alexa") pushes the output toward a cinematic look.

Control the Style

Sora can mimic a wide range of visual styles, but you have to be explicit. Without style guidance, outputs tend to look like generic stock footage — technically fine, but lacking character.

Styles that Sora handles well:

• Cinematic / filmic: Add "35mm film grain, shallow depth of field, color graded" for a movie look.
• Photorealistic: The default, but you can push it with "hyperrealistic, 8K resolution, natural lighting."
• Anime / animation: Specify the sub-style. "Studio Ghibli style" gives different results than "cyberpunk anime."
• Vintage / retro: "VHS aesthetic, 1980s home video" or "Super 8 film, 1970s color palette."
• Abstract / artistic: "Surrealist, melting clocks, impossible geometry" for non-literal outputs.

I've found that combining a subject with a specific film reference works extremely well:

A cat sitting on a windowsill during a thunderstorm, in the visual style of Blade Runner 2049. Teal and orange color grading, volumetric light beams through rain, anamorphic lens flare.

Prompt Structure: The Formula That Works

After testing dozens of formats, I settled on a consistent structure that reliably produces good results:

[Camera/Shot type] + [Subject description] + [Action] + [Environment/Setting] + [Lighting/Time] + [Style/Mood] + [Technical details]

You don't need every element every time. But covering at least four of these gives Sora enough to work with.

Full example using the formula:

A handheld tracking shot of a street musician playing violin on a rainy evening in Paris. The musician wears a dark wool coat, standing under a warm streetlamp. Pedestrians with umbrellas blur past in the background. Cinematic, shot on 16mm film with natural grain and warm amber tones.

Breaking it down:

• Camera: Handheld tracking shot
• Subject: Street musician playing violin, dark wool coat
• Action: Playing, standing
• Environment: Rainy evening, Paris street, streetlamp
• Lighting: Warm streetlamp against cool rain
• Style: Cinematic, 16mm film
• Technical: Natural grain, warm amber tones

If you want to analyze prompts from existing AI videos and reverse-engineer what made them work, VideoToPrompt can extract the prompt structure from any video clip — which is incredibly useful for learning what produces good results.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

After generating hundreds of clips, these are the pitfalls I keep seeing:

1. Being Too Vague

"A beautiful sunset" gives you a postcard. "Golden hour over the Amalfi Coast, camera slowly panning right across terraced hillside villas, warm light catching terracotta rooftops" gives you a scene.

2. Overloading the Prompt

There's a sweet spot. If you try to describe ten different actions, three scene transitions, and five style references in one prompt, Sora gets confused. Stick to one scene per prompt and keep it under 200 words.

3. Ignoring Physics

Sora still struggles with certain physical interactions — hands, reflections, and complex object manipulation. If your prompt requires a character to juggle while riding a unicycle, you'll likely get artifacts. Keep physical interactions simple for now.

4. Forgetting Temporal Flow

Sora generates video, not images. Your prompt should describe something that unfolds over time. "A timelapse of a flower blooming" works better than "a bloomed flower" because it gives the model a temporal arc.

5. Not Iterating

Your first prompt is almost never your best. I usually generate 3-4 variations, tweaking one element each time. Change the lighting. Swap the camera angle. Adjust the style reference. Each iteration teaches you what Sora responds to best.

Pro Tips for Advanced Users

Combine styles for unique looks. "Wes Anderson color palette with Tarkovsky pacing" produces something neither style would give you alone. Cross-pollinating references pushes Sora into more original territory.

Use negative framing sparingly. Sora doesn't have a formal negative prompt system like Stable Diffusion, but you can guide away from unwanted results by being more specific about what you do want rather than what you don't.

Leverage the Text Counter to check prompt length. Sora has an input limit, and excessively long prompts get truncated. Keeping your prompt concise but detailed (100-150 words) tends to hit the sweet spot.

Study what works by reverse-engineering. Upload successful AI videos to VideoToPrompt to extract and analyze the prompts behind them. This is the fastest way to build intuition for what language produces what visuals.

Match prompt complexity to video length. For short 5-second clips, a simple two-sentence prompt is enough. For 15-20 second clips, you need more scene detail and temporal progression to keep the output coherent.

Conclusion

Writing good prompts for Sora is a learnable skill. It comes down to being specific about your scene, using camera language Sora understands, and iterating on your results. Start with the formula — camera, subject, action, environment, style — and adjust from there.

The gap between "AI-generated video" and "cinematic AI video" is almost entirely in the prompt. Take the time to craft yours carefully, and the results will speak for themselves.

Ready to level up your prompt game? Try VideoToPrompt to analyze any AI-generated video and extract the prompt techniques behind it — it's the fastest way to learn what actually works.