you'll find a lot of people who want to be writers without reading or writing much of anything.

as for the same old plots, we all hope we can bring something special to the reader through our own interpretation or there's no point to writing at all.

and in defense of Mr. Martin, if nobody killed any darlings (a phrase I've heard more often about editing prose than care of characters), many storylines would suffer. can you imagine Lion King if Mufasa had lived? how about Harry Potter? grief and loss are also part of our stories - to completely neglect them is untrue to the human experience.