Short stories, screenplays and novels are definitely not tools, since you don't build stuff with them, they are finished works, and if you want to make another one, you have to start from scratch. I'd argue there are more similar to frameworks, but less powerful, since the structure of a novel only gives you a basic idea of how the end product should look, instead of doing any actual work for you.
The novel, short story and so on are absolutely tools used to build things[1]. So are genres (sci-fi, fantasy), narrative modes (free indirect discourse, stream of consciousness), and even rhythms or styles (see the Oxen of the Sun episode of Ulysses for an extreme example). Concepts are generative: if you decide to write a Künstlerroman, a lot of the heavy lifting is done for you.
That said, a single writer can't, as a general rule[2], "use [their] ability to make using [their] ability easier" in this way, since genres, modes and the like don't "just work." Even when they descend from the work of one or a few innovators, there's a long process of consensus-building that has to take place before new concepts become conventional and, as a result, productive.
1. The screenplay (for both film and television) in particular is structurally very rigid, although slug lines and such admit more variation than most people think. And the actual writing is capable of great variety. Check out the original Alien script (http://sfy.ru/?script=alien) or the Alien-inspired style of WALL•E.
2. Though of course it happens: T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, et al.
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Short stories, screenplays and novels are definitely not tools, since you don't build stuff with them, they are finished works, and if you want to make another one, you have to start from scratch. I'd argue there are more similar to frameworks, but less powerful, since the structure of a novel only gives you a basic idea of how the end product should look, instead of doing any actual work for you.
The novel, short story and so on are absolutely tools used to build things[1]. So are genres (sci-fi, fantasy), narrative modes (free indirect discourse, stream of consciousness), and even rhythms or styles (see the Oxen of the Sun episode of Ulysses for an extreme example). Concepts are generative: if you decide to write a Künstlerroman, a lot of the heavy lifting is done for you.
That said, a single writer can't, as a general rule[2], "use [their] ability to make using [their] ability easier" in this way, since genres, modes and the like don't "just work." Even when they descend from the work of one or a few innovators, there's a long process of consensus-building that has to take place before new concepts become conventional and, as a result, productive.
1. The screenplay (for both film and television) in particular is structurally very rigid, although slug lines and such admit more variation than most people think. And the actual writing is capable of great variety. Check out the original Alien script (http://sfy.ru/?script=alien) or the Alien-inspired style of WALL•E.
2. Though of course it happens: T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, et al.