I completely agree. This is a good list, but a poor prompt.

Also, I sometimes find a sort of Streisand effect: when you tell the LLM to avoid something is starts doing it more. Like, if you say "don't use delve" it contains the words "use delve" which, amongst a larger context, seems to get picked up.

I have more success telling the LLM to write in the style of a particular author I like. It seems to activate different linguistic patterns and feel less generic.

Then, I make an "editor agent" comb through, looking for tropes and rewording them. Their sole focus is eliminating the tropes, which seems to work better.