What actually makes a good prompt?

I keep hearing that “prompting is a skill,” and I’m starting to believe it, because I can ask the same AI tool two slightly different ways and get wildly different results.

Sometimes I get a great answer. Other times I get something vague, generic, or way off target, and I’m never fully sure whether the tool is the issue or my prompt is.

So I’m curious how people here think about writing prompts that actually work.

What makes the biggest difference?

- being more specific?

- giving context?

- assigning a role?

- asking for examples?

- telling it the format you want back?

- breaking a task into steps?

I’m coming at this as a beginner, so I’m not looking for mega-technical prompt engineering. Just the real-world stuff that actually improves results.

Would love to know:

- what changed prompting for you?

- are there simple formulas you use?

- do you write one long prompt, or go back and forth in smaller steps?

- and what are the most common mistakes beginners make?

Feels like this is one of those things that sounds simple until you actually try to do it well.