Shooting Script?

Yes.

f you look at what screenplay writing software produces, it isn't quite for reading and it doesn't look to me like it would work for setting up shots.

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When the director and crew actually shoot the film, they typically use a shot list, and sometimes story boards. The director's copy of the script will often be marked up with notes.

Part of the reason scripts are formatted the way they are is to allow all the crew members space to write notes. The makeup dept, for example, will write notes in the margins about different looks at different times of day, and notes to maintain continuity as the shoot jumps around in the story timeline.

So what is the convention about what a screenplay should represent? A layout of the scenes and dialog and not much more? Or as much about the film's visual/aural world as possible?

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Scripts are usually a compromise between the strict layout of scenes and dialog, on the one hand, and the complete description of the film's world on the other. Part of the art of the screenplay is finding a way to give the full flavor of the film's world using a relatively small number of words.

The best way to get a feel for what kinds of compromises are appropriate, and what goes too far, is to, well you know...

And then watch the movie and see how much of what's on screen was originally put into the screenplay.

Since it will normally be the director, production designer, costume designer, hair and makeup people, director of photography, editor, etc. who make the ultimate decisions about the film's look, the writer has to make choices that give the crew a starting point for their own creative work. In my experience, they need the writer to make specific choices that evoke the world. What they can do without is long, novelistic description.

Scripts written by writer directors are an exception to this general rule, because the writer director can put in any detail at any length she sees fit.

You are writing a reading script. Leave out scene numbers and any description of how shots should be done. This means no close ups, no pans, none of that. Just tell your story.

Congrats on the novel.

your spec script, what you're trying to get people to buy, will probably be much more entertaining than a shooting script, with scene numbers and shots. as a general rule, i've read and observed, you want to avoid writing 'pan across desert' in your spec, though 'biff scans the horizon' is kind of a cheat that has the same effect, see? most people will advise that you don't direct the shots (and some will say it doesn't matter, though these guys are in the minority it seems), but at the same time they'll say there are tricks and gimmicks to get your specific shot across without outright trying to direct the thing.

Jane Espenson has a blog post on this very subject.