my regext in Validators is:
The field Testing Instructions its contents must match against the regular expression ^((?!Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready).)*$
testing instructions is a "Text Field (multi-line)" with a default of:
Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready
When I have testing instructions with a line break such as
a
a
I get this error of not matching 
Field Testing Instructions with actual value a a does not match regular expression ^((?!Developer add testing instructions in order to be allowed to set status to ready).)*$
It seems that you have tried to perform an illegal workflow operation.
If you think this message is wrong, please contact your JIRA administrators.
What can I do to allow line breaks in the value that I am validating?
--
What I am trying to do is require testing instructions field be filled out before transitioning to a status for testing. but sadly, Empty custom fields don't show on a ticket by default... and so I need to have a default value so I can't use field exists validators 