The outline phase is the most critical as well as the most difficult. It's always a painful slog but a good outline will save you time and again. Rushing into a script, without a fleshed-out story, is fatal. Writing the script is the fun part. If you're really having problems cracking a story or a scene go to Starbucks and suck down a Grande Cappuccino.
Caffeine helps a lot.
We met with Joel Silver and Dick Donner while we were writing our first draft to give them a progress report. Two days later, we're sitting in our office at Universal when Joel calls up out of the blue. I'm going to put him on the box. We spent the next forty five minutes on the phone with him going through the story. It was a blast, he's very funny.