And in other forms of writing. Is it one of my hallucinations, or have I heard stories about Fitzgerald having a wall full of Great Gatsby chapters?

In screenwriting, this kind of outlining is so common modern screenwriting prorams like Final Draft actually have a Card View (I think they call it something else, perhaps so as not to seem old fashioned). There is probably not a screenwriter alive who has not at least attempted to work with cards, and most have tried physical index cards. Even in this digital era, many million dollar screenwriters still work in 3x5's. And not just those who are old school and who learned it before the modern screenwriting technology boom.

In a screenwriting program (or on an old Smith Carona and carbon paper for that matter) your script is written in Slug Lines that start every scene. When you switch to the card view in your software, each Slug Line has it's own card and you can drag them around the screen to rearrange, just as you might on your kitchen table.

It's not so much to arrange scenes radically. Even Post-Tarrantino, 99% of all films are still basically linear stories. You still have to have something happen when it logically would happen, so there isn't a lot of lerge scale deconstruction in the process. Every scene has to lead from the previous, and to the next. That's why the emergence of tools like this has not caused a rush of non linear films to the marketplace. Writers may be able to work in non linear mode, but people still tend to listen and consume information in something that at least hangs on something like a linear narrative.

Rather, I think the reason it works for screenwriters (and variations could for any writer) is that it enables you to put your ideas down as they are ready rather than in the order they will be ultimately publish in.

In other words, I can write my book on Merlin Mann's Ascension to Life Hack Superstardom not in the order that makes sense, but in the order in which I obtain the info.... and move them into the right places later.

Sometimes you know the ending, but not the beginning. No problem. Dump. Shuffle. Flesh out a card when it feels like you have the insight to do it. When a card takes on enough focus you can write it up, do so. Worry not about the other cards until they are ready.

I've written two screenplays, and both were written in what might appear to be an insanely haphazard scene order. But I wrote the scenes as they became clear to me and never worried about it. An important part of this process GTD'ers can relate to is being able to write without undue thought directed toward the places you don't need to worry about. I can write Scene 41, altho Scene 5 is a mystery to me still. That kind of piece of mind, being able to work on one actionable scene at a time, is priceless and to me was like Enlightenment. I can't imagine how somebody could write a screenplay, or a grocery list for that matter, in order.

Some people like the tactile feeling of cards and will prefer it over any new feature available in software. And there's nothing quite like putting them up on the wall.

In screenplay (and not necessarily in other forms) we have a three act structure and I like to see the cards on the wall in three panels so I have a sense of how much heft each act has. No software program I have used can approximate this view. In Final Draft you can see a handful of cards at once. That doesn't help you get a physical feel for when the middle act is just too damn long. That actual old fashioned on the wall real world physical eye view does.

But for outlining and organizing, you can "index card" in a program like Omni Outliner as well. I wrote a screenplay by simply writing a descriptive line every time I thought of a scene, with little or no concern for whether or not I would keep them. I just dropped them in in the order I thought of them, creating line after line in Omni. I thought I might have a scene in a strip club. I dropped it in right after the last one I thought about. Later I identified the crucial plot points and starting weeding out the lame ones and making sure I had the one scene leads to the next support for the keepers.

Hit print... you have an outline. Some writing programs can import an Omni file I think. In theory, I could take that Omni outline and import it into Word or Final Draft or whatever and then just fill in the spaces. I did it the old school way and just phsyically peered at my outline on actual honest to God paper and wrote from that.

As appendix to this long post... .Blake Snyder's book is a good one, but probably of limited interest to writers who are not writing for screen. If you are writing scripts, it's one of the better ones and a very good survey. It's not expecially ground breaking, but it is light and conversational and enthusiastic and will provide inspiration. It's called "The Last Screenwriting Book You Will Ever Need" and that could be so. They're all the same unless you use them to fill your tank with writing energy. I do, and Snyder's (for me) is one of the better.

Keep on truckin, yall.