[gabriel666smith]

Uplift on "random dictionary words" (excluding 'stop words' & proper nouns) was ~20%; uplift on "random words from my local epub library" (same exclusion rules) was ~40%.

The random words from my local epub library (leans toward postmodern fiction) were definitely more evocative than the dictionary words when I eyeballed them.

I randomised each turn but kept the story prompt request the same across control, dictionary, personal library.

I must stress that I'm not claiming scientific method or certainty here - just sharing an approach that seemed to work well enough for me, and seemed like a reasonable conclusion: introduce noise, get more interesting output.

I haven't done the math but I think you'd need a much larger sample size than 1k per category to prove the uplift!