I've been doing the "writing ideas down in a book" thing for a little while hoping someday to do something with them. I've been seriously thinking about attempting a screenplay. I've never taken a class or done anything like it but I figure why not. Even if I just do it for myself.
I've purchased two books and have been reading screenplays online because apparently format is above content as far as getting a script read.
Where my confusion lies is that in the two books I'm reading and the screenplays I've read, I'm getting different information.
For example, I've read that you're not supposed write what you can't shoot on camera. In one case someone was describing a room full of people we were just meeting and wrote something like this:
This guy was someone who would kick your dog and sleep with your sister.
In the book I'm reading that is wrong. But I was reading another screenplay and someone wrote this:
In another age men who shook the world for their own purposes
were called conquerors. In our age, the men who shake the
planet for their own power and greed are called corrupters.
And of the world's corrupters Bill stands alone. For while he
corrupts the world, inside himself he is pure.
This was from Kill Bill. Now I know Tarantino wrote it and was going to direct it. He probably told Miramax that he had another movie and they let him go with it. But my question is, is that paragraph fundamentally correct? If your an amateur screenwriter, would a reader scoff at that?
I have a few other questions but I'll start with that one