My first taste of Hollywood and screenwriting was also via William Goldman when I read a copy of his Adventures in the Screen Trade. This was way before the internet and my local bookshop didn't have much by way of instruction manuals on how to write a script. I learned formatting from the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid script in the back of the book. It also gave me a heads up on how bloody difficult it is to break into the business. I still go back to it from time to time.

Goldman's style, which he has done consistently ever since "Butch Cassidy," is use CUT TO set to the left margin between every single shot he envisions in a scene. You can go here for an example and my discussion how you can make a small change to avoid using those transitions which are less popular stylistically nowadays. But no matter the style, whether you like it or not, Goldman is one of a kind, arguably the dean of contemporary American screenwriting, not only because of the many, many movies he's written and influence he has had through his various memoirs, essays, columns, etc, but also because of this: He wrote "Butch Cassidy" on spec and sold it for a reported $400K. That marks a major plot point in the emergence of the spec script market.

I stopped using CUT TO a looooonnnggg time ago. I got my knuckles rapped about it a couple of times and the consensus seemed to be that it was completely unnecessary. But he is a legend. And still going strong at 81.