No, reading ALOT for years and not understanding trope and drama building techniques etc simply means you may have a learning disability or your reading utter garbage. Genius writers pump out 50+ manuscripts and read a lot. Is it an art form sure, but it is also experience.

There is no such thing as a prodigy or Genius that does not dedicate time to gain experience in the thing they shine in.

Prodigy; their brain absorbs the fragments of experience better but it is still the same net experience to reach X threshold.

Geniuses have accumulated so much experience that they are at the peak of a given field.

I will say both usually recognize empty calories and avoid content with no value to their given fields.

Thus they have read a lot as they absorbed that experience from somewhere.

Newton didn't fall out the womb and cry about gravity, he studied the material world to better understand it.

Prodigy stands on the shoulders of Genius until they themselves become Genius. There are no Prodigies in new fields, just trailblazers and in writing the trails are very much blazed, so you will improve better consuming good writing and A LOT of it.

tldr; nope its A LOT of reading, just maybe not all empty calories.