In general and if used judiciously, yes.

If including something like emotion gives your screenplay flavor and helps paint a better picture of your character or scene, include it. But keep in mind that while it may help the reader, the viewer can’t see “happy;” you have to express that through the actions and dialogue as well.

Accordingly, places like character or setting introductions, the purposes of which are to establish tone or underlying description, are prime for such detail.

ARTHUR GETMAN, 14, sits 15-inches from a 60-inch plasma TV, weeks worth of meals stuck in his braces. His glasses are five years out of style and very bent out of shape, most likely because he doesn’t take them off when he watches TV in bed at night. The two years he’s spent at the bottom of the middle school social hierarchy have weighed heavy on his soul, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him; when he’s playing PS3, he may as well be a God.

Источник: You can include emotion in character description. | Screenwriting.io.

Sweepstakes pitching (also know as a “bake-off”) is when a studio or producer brings in many different screenwriters to pitch on the same project before deciding which one to hire (“the winner”).

In most cases, sweepstakes pitching occurs when the studio owns a licensed property — such as a character or board game — for which there is no obvious narrative. Thus, screenwriters pitching their take are really coming up with a vision for the movie as a whole, unlike the more straightforward adaptation of a novel or foreign film.

In bake-offs, the studio is often asking, “Is there even a movie here?”

Sweepstakes pitching is controversial in the screenwriting community. Screenwriters will often spend days or weeks of preparation on a project for which their odds of landing the job is slim. (And in some cases, the studio may opt to hire no writers at all.) In this way, some screenwriters feel they are being exploited as unpaid research-and-development.

Another concern is idea contamination — or theft. Because studios or producers end up hearing multiple takes from multiple writers, they may end up using elements from a pitch without hiring the writer who created them.

Источник: Sweepstakes pitching is a quantity-based approach. | Screenwriting.io.