Sora 2 responds to detail. The more precisely you describe the physical event you want — how something moves, what the camera does, what light looks like — the more coherent and visually compelling the output.

These 20 prompts are structured around Sora 2's specific strengths: physical coherence, environmental simulation, and impossible-but-believable scenarios.

Prompt Structure for Sora 2

Before the examples, the four elements that consistently improve Sora 2 output:

The physical event — what happens and how. Not just "dramatic scene" but "water rises through the glass in slow motion."
Camera position and movement — static, tracking, tilting, rotating. Sora 2 follows camera directions reliably.
Environmental conditions — fog, golden hour, studio lighting, underwater. These anchor the visual tone.
Time dimension — slow motion, time-lapse, real-time. Sora 2's physics look best in slow motion.

20 Sora 2 Prompts by Category

Impossible Physics (Sora 2's Strongest Category)

Water in a glass rises upward, filling the space above the rim as a suspended sphere. The glass sits on a wooden table. Soft studio light. Slow motion.
A campfire burns in reverse — flames shrink inward, embers extinguish from outside in, smoke descends into the wood. Night. Stars visible.
Autumn leaves fall upward from the forest floor. The camera tilts up to follow them rising into the canopy. Morning light.
A stone statue in a city square slowly exhales — breath visible in cold air. No other movement. Overcast winter light.
A struck match extinguishes and the flame retracts into the match head. Then the match unstrikes. Macro. Dark background. Slow motion.

Environmental Spectacle

Viewed from above the storm: lightning branches in slow motion inside an active thunderstorm cloud. The camera is static, looking down.
A frozen waterfall begins to melt — ice cracks, chunks fall, water flows resume from the top down. Dawn light. Mountain setting.
Dense sea fog rolls across an empty pier at sunrise. The fog has visible structure — separate layers moving at different speeds.
A desert sandstorm approaches a single palm tree. The sand front arrives in slow motion. The camera is ground-level, wide.
Northern lights over a still lake. The aurora reflects perfectly in the water below. Camera holds static.

Macro and Micro

A soap bubble surface in extreme close-up — iridescent colors swirl and shift. The bubble pops in slow motion, film retracting from a central tear.
A drop of dye falls into clear water — tendrils spread outward in slow motion in macro detail. Dark background.
A snowflake forms on glass, viewed from close up — the crystal structure builds from the center outward in real time. Cold blue light.
A spider rebuilds its web in time-lapse — thread by thread, from a single anchor point. Morning dew on each new thread.
Raindrops on a glass surface — each drop rolls and merges with others. Macro. Bokeh background of city lights.

Surreal Realism

A city park at midday. All shadows have detached slightly from their objects and are drifting sideways by one meter. People walk by without noticing.
A commuter train travels through a tunnel — but the tunnel walls are a coral reef. Fish swim past the windows. Passengers read, unbothered.
A restaurant. All the food on every table has frozen in mid-air — forks, glasses, soup — at the exact moment a waiter dropped something. Everyone looks at the waiter. Everything else is still suspended.
A person walks their dog in a park. The dog's shadow is a wolf shadow. The person doesn't notice. Golden hour.
An office building at night, lit from inside. Every window shows a different century — medieval scribes, Victorian offices, 1970s typing pools. Time-lapse street view outside.

Using These Prompts on aicut

aicut gives you direct access to Sora 2 without requiring a separate OpenAI subscription. The recommended workflow for these prompts:

For physical impossibility prompts (#1–5): Set duration to 10–15 seconds so the physical event has time to fully develop. Generate 3 seeds and pick the most coherent physics.

For environmental spectacle (#6–10): A static or slowly moving camera tends to produce the most dramatic output. Avoid fast pans — environmental detail needs time to register.

For macro/micro (#11–15): "Macro" or "macro lens" in the prompt is important — it signals Sora 2 to produce extreme close-up framing. "Slow motion" is essential for these.

For surreal realism (#16–20): These are the most demanding prompts. Sora 2 needs to maintain photorealism while incorporating the impossible element. Generate 4–5 seeds and discard any where the impossible element looks digital or obvious.

Comparing Sora 2 with Other Models on the Same Prompts

For prompts #1–5 (impossible physics), Sora 2 typically outperforms other models because physical coherence is its core differentiator. For prompts #6–10 (environmental), it's worth generating the same prompt in Veo 3.1 and comparing — Veo 3.1 often produces more aesthetically refined lighting at the cost of slightly less physical coherence.

aicut's multi-model interface makes this comparison trivial — generate in Sora 2, then switch the model selector to Veo 3.1 and generate again. Pick the better output.

Key Takeaways

Sora 2 prompts should specify the physical mechanism (what moves, how, in what direction) rather than just the aesthetic result.
Camera direction and time dimension (slow motion, time-lapse) dramatically affect output quality — always include them.
Generate 3+ seeds for physical impossibility prompts. Sora 2 has meaningful output variation.
For environmental prompts, compare Sora 2 against Veo 3.1 — both are strong and the winner varies by prompt.

Run these prompts on Sora 2 at aicut — or compare them against Veo 3.1 and Kling 3 in the same session.