I tend to jump around with pre-writing/outlining. Sometimes I use cards -- I've carrying a script in my pocket for a few weeks now -- sometimes I do a beat outline, sometimes I just write. For me, it really depends on the story. Comedy and action depends so much on structure that I use cards. With thrillers, it's all about the beats and gotcha moments, so an outline works better. And dramas I just jot down characters and a general plot then see what happens. It's all in the rewriting anyhow, so that first draft is mostly about getting it done.

Re: electronic "index cards" ... Here's an April article from Salon: "Do e-readers inhibit reading comprehension?" http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/do_e_readers_inhibit_reading_comprehension_partner/ Here's a quote from the article (emphasis mine): "Based on observations during the study, Mangen thinks that students reading pdf files had a more difficult time finding particular information when referencing the texts. Volunteers on computers could only scroll or click through the pdfs one section at a time, whereas students reading on paper could hold the text in its entirety in their hands and quickly switch between different pages. Because of their easy navigability, paper books and documents may be better suited to absorption in a text. “The ease with which you can find out the beginning, end and everything in between and the constant connection to your path, your progress in the text, might be some way of making it less taxing cognitively, so you have more free capacity for comprehension,” Mangen says." If you read the article and its brief explanations of some of the neurological underpinnings of the way we interpret and interact with text in different forms, many writers' preference for paper index cards and/or corkboards will make perfect sense. I would feel hobbled if I couldn't spread out my story in tangible pieces and reorder them at will. Doing that on a computer screen doesn't feel the same, and now that I have science confirming that it really ISN'T the same, I absolutely do not and will not ever feel like a Luddite over this quirk of the process.

Yeah, you can't beat physical index cards! I used to plan on cards, then scribble a rough outline from them before starting a script: now I'm cutting that stage and writing straight from cards. Seems to be working so far... I like the ease with which you can jump between scenes on different cards, and the fact you can look at as many or as few at once as you need to...

I've always used rolls of butcher paper I tack along as many walls as possible and colored markers to track people and events. It was fun because there was color and movement and I could SEE the story...and my mom used to give me those rolls as a kid to draw on :-) Now I can't find the paper so I've just switched to the cards and love it. A wall of them. When things start coming together, I've started putting them on those giant Post-It pages and sticking those to the wall with smaller Post-Its attached. I love the physicality of it and the smells and feel. But I also use Evernote and the voice recording option. When out and about, if there's a person who dresses a certain way that fits a character or an idea hits, I can make a voice note with tags and send it to my account. But then those notes go on cards, as well as any photos I might take. But sometimes I just sit down and write. And keep going until I splat up against a wall. That's when it's time to outline and finding order in chaos.

[...] This is what a wall in a TV writers room may look like at any given time, cluttered with index cards... [...]

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[…] And I’m not alone.  The Writer’s Store even sells em (when available).  And you all hear me go on and on about The Black List.  Well they just put up a great article about Index Cards. […]