How much work till the framework works if the framework should work good?

Maybe I'm just not that skilled at this, but is it just me or do the most basic parts of game development seem to take the longest? Stuff that is rightfully taken for granted in games, like uncontrolled events or text to progress the story. Even fading screens for crying out loud! I find myself spending weeks and weeks just getting these prelminary things to the point of looking halfway defective so I can move on to the next piece of poorly designed baseware without actually focusing on making the game itself.

I've never taken a course on game design, and my math education is at a high school level - pretty much I can simply recognize the word to wikipedia it. But I've worked on throw-away games for several years now and I'm noticing that there has been a common wall of difficult tasks that are key to simply getting a framework for putting in screen effects and storylines.

I understand, game design is work. It's going to take countless hours of time and effort to complete anything worth glancing at before putting back on the shelf. But there has to be a process that is taught in the game design scholastic programs across the universe that simplifies these common game development goals.

Just a couple of examples are the following.

-StoryTelling tools - including drawing a text box, and writing in it at different rates or colors according to a syntax I come up with.
-Cursor to letter input tools - The "Input Name" screen is, and always has been, my greatest foil. Anything outside of the mouse or keyboard is archaic, but it should at least be correct.
-Cursor to menu command tools - just like inputting the name - we can draw a Gui, and even write out a list of things in it but making a cursor highlight a particular item in a list using a keyboard or controller - not so much.
-Screen effects - take the camera and shake it. Tint it blue? Fade to black? All of it's possible but it never seems to look right, and it takes forever to look wrong...
-Event handling - So you made it to stage 2 - now you need to have the bad guy come out and taunt you before running off and giving the player control to whap his endless horde of minions. Why is that so hard for me to figure out?

What I'm looking for is a baseline - beyond "This is a while-loop, but this is a do-while loop" and before "This is how your dynamically generated finite state machine makes a dog that urinates on the carpet and eats your shoes - but still learns from your punishment." I'm talking the things that are commonplace in every video game. I'm willing to go get a book about this amd make up for the classes I never took in school.

I'll be happy to elaborate if I was unclear, but does anyone in the community have any suggestions?