[pmichaud]

Echoing my sibling: yes, absolutely. Think of it like a design pattern for writing. I think you can push the analogy pretty far actually: they are codified formulae designed to "implement" concepts in a story in a familiar and largely effective way, in the general case. They can be tinkered with around the edges, and implementation details can change, but at the core a factory is a factory.

Not every formula can be applied to every "story problem", and they can often be mixed and matched to achieve the desired outcome.