I'll start. I do not outline. I consider my first draft part outline, part treatment. I know my characters (to a point and some better than others), I know the setting, I know the conflict and I know where I want to end. The most important pre-work I do is carrying the story and the characters around in my head for a good long time. I mean a good long time. If I can't hold all the elements in my head long enough to do a first draft, then I consider the project an unworthy vessel, to quote William Burroughs.
I'm sure I'm just as likely to outline a mess as write a great script off the top of my head and I'd rather waste my time writing a bad script than making notes and outlines that may or may not come to something. I need the scene-writing practice.
Or maybe I'm just lazy and disorganized. I'll allow for that.

My writing partner and I always outline, but I've started doing one more step ahead of the outline.

I write the one sheet first.

For the screenplay we're writing right now, I skipped over the logline and went right to the 3-4 paragraph breakdown. I filled in most of the details, leaving the ending as I wasn't quite sure about that yet, and THEN I went over it with my writing partner.

We wrote the outline immediately after that, and we finished the first draft two weeks after the outline.

This has already paid off for us, because prior to this script, we wrote an outline for a different spec. And the outline just didn't work for us. Yes, it was a movie, but we didn't like it. We did start scripting, but we only got a few pages in before we both called it quits.

I think doing that probably saved us six months or so at minimum. I mean, if the outline and/or one sheet isn't any good, the script has no hope at all, so why waste the time?

Outlining shows you many (not all) of the flaws in your script ahead of time, so that you can fix them before you start scripting.

Susan

My last script got a request for a treatment. After researching the somewhat ambiguous definition of a treatment, having the script mapped out on index cards made the treatment much easier to finish. And by much easier, I mean in the two or three days that I had to finish it. I just wish they'd give me a yes or no after several months.

Agreed Susan!

To me, outline is story.

I mean, unless you're a genius and have the entire story worked out beforehand in your head, in detail, I don't know how you can expect to sit down and write anything that resembles a well-structured story.

No doubt about it: the outline is where all the agonizing work takes place.

And once I have the outline done, writing the actual pages becomes a fun game for me: I wake up each day knowing what I have to work on, and limit myself to dreaming up the details for just one scene.

Re: Stravinsky's quote:

"Not at all. These 88 keys give me a context within which I am free to do anything. If I didn't have those boundaries, I would be lost."

As a parallel, by having the structure of your story worked out in advance, you define your 'boundaries," and within that context, you are then 'free' to write the hell out of your characters.

For me, Stravinsky's quote describes screenwriting in general and explains its main appeal to me, as opposed to, say, writing novels. I love that screenwriting has boundaries and an expected "form".

On the other hand, the infinite possibilities and "lawlessness" of novel writing scares the hell out of me. I would never attempt it...

charts, absolutely. outlines, i actively loathe. although i guess the difference between the two is small. something about writing a prose outline drives me crazy. whereas if i draw up a schematic, i find it easier to "see" the flow of the story beats.

I realize this is a long-dead post, but I was looking at it today and it reminded me of Judd Apatow's advice to Ivan Reitman when Reitman was stuck on Up In the Air: "Write the end. Because then, theoretically, you're done."